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TIM0THY WIMEBRUISER 


A NARRATIVE 

IN 

.lE^ o s E ^ nsr E e e s e . 



By J. N. Gallagher. 
' \ 


Gentle reader, flushed or pale, 
If you’d know my simple tale. 
Follow me within the vale. 



1886: 

San Antonio Light Pkint. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1886, by 
J. N. GALLAGHER, 

In the Clerk’s Office of the District Court of the United States for 
the Western District of Texas. 


'WDEDICATION.w— 


To THOSE WHO EXPECT FUN FROM A DEACON, SMILES FROM 

A Cynic, wit from a Quaker, and humor from a Coroner, 
THIS Volume is not Dedicated. 

BY THE AUTHOK. 


t 


PREFACE.^ 


Unlike many others, this little work was written 
during business hours, and chronicles from the 
cradle to the coffin the strange vicissitudes of an 
ill-fated character. 

Kegarding its tone, the over-delicate should close 
the book, but the sturdy constituted may open and 
read it, and if they get the best of it, it will be their 
own fault. 

Ko tear-drowning love scenes nor marrow-rak- 
ing exploits hold the reader like a grip on water, 
but it simply details the simple details of a tale — 
that is all, and perhaps portrays that it is best 
that — 


Afloat on Life’s ocean where danger-waves roll, . 
This Heaven-bound vessel with cargo of soul, 
Drifts out unadvised of each tempest and shoal 
That cower beyond waiting mariner’s toll. 


San Antonio, 1886. 


The Authok. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


CHAPTER I. 

Somewliere in the suburbs of the vicinity of 
midnight between two days, months and years I 
first kicked candle-light with bare feet ; hence my 
kicks. 

Some friends managed to wrap me in a pair of 
trousers or something, and then left me to grow 
up with the country. 

On my issue, time-pieces extended their hands 
more ways than politicians at a ward meeting, con- 
sequently it is doubtful which day, month or year 
deserves fame for landing me. Even grandfather^s 
go-as-you-please regulator had lost seven days in a 
week, and its hands were as idle as a darkey^s after 
pay-day. Eather^s watch indicated one hour to 
twelve and mother’s one hour after; the doctor 
had no ^‘turnip” — neither had I; so my birthday, 
or rather my birth-night, is like a black cat under 
a cloud, dark and obscure. 

Although I resembled the result of the last ef- 
fort of expiring nature, my parents conceived me 


6 


TIMOTHY WINEBRIJISER. 


the hugest cherub that ever drained a nipple. 
They died disfigured with that conception. 

They labeled me Timothy Winebruiser — a good 
boy seldom — and when I could “ monkey with 
hot iron, wasps’ nests and other attractions which 
warm and enliven boyhood, turned me over to a 
school-marm who found me too good to punish and 
too bad to tolerate. Her knowledge wasn’t garter 
high to her vision, and she had only one eye ; still 
she could distinguish a bent pin from a church 
steeple any day, a fact I often felt while capering 
on the night side of her. She finally loaded me 
with enough knowledge to enter college, where 
brawn is often cultivated over brains, and where 
at sixteen years I graduated twelfth in a class of a 
dozen. 

Soon there, several class-mates kindly assisted 
me to expend every dollar my poor mother had 
given me and then shunned me as one would his 
mother-in-law. Light in pocket, I sank to my ears 
in study, and fame seemed to echo “ ’ear ! ’ear ! ” 
But I bobbed up again when a chum named Kob- 
ert kindly furnished me with funds until my quar- 
terly remittance. On its reception my summer 
friends resumed their winter friendship, and none 
shone with more splendor than Winebruiser, who 
knew not that their kindness was as transient as a 
sunbeam. They suggested a banquet in my honor,. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


7 


to be spread ill my room after the faculty had re- 
tired. It would not set me back much, they said — 
only twenty dollars, wine and cigars included. I 
consented, and felt as important as a newly-elected 
Alderman on a Fourth-of-July occasion. 

The table spread, we first attacked the wine, 
which some fortified with sterner stuff. After the 
first circuit only one was to speak at once, but 
after a few rounds we were all speakers and no 
listeners. I was the idol of the hour. Soon the 
earth seemed to change its axis and rotate with 
bewildering velocity, when I fell over a chair and 
into the lap of Morpheus, while a chum declaimed 
on the mighty infiuence which Winebruiser would 
doubtless wield in the realm of thought. 

When I awoke, my associates were at their 
studies and over the night^s wassail, while I had a 
head on me bigger than a Chicago girPs foot, and 
would be sent home in disgrace — or a box-car — 
perhaps. 

Half-smoked cigars, broken bottles, partly-tasted 
wine, and the room teeming and redolent with 
saliva, clearly mirrored the night^s proceedings. 
Before I could elaborate an excuse, the principal 
entered. He was so altitudinous that were he 
kicked several inches up into his hat he would 
still be tall. Bending over me like a rainbow, he 
knocked over a bottle of wine and told me to go 


8 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


home and tell my parents they wanted me. I did 
Shortly after they died, leaving me a poor waif on 
the wayside of time to face prematurely the stern 
realities of frigid humanity. 

I freighted the only heart that beat for Wine- 
bruiser, and only through which coursed kindred 
blood. The homestead was involved and taken for 
debt. My only possession was an old mule whose 
contracted sides and general appearance argued 
the want of a blanket to keep his meals from blow- 
ing through him, but in whose bones reposed my 
fondest expectations. 

Sadly viewing the old homestead and two mounds 
on the hillside, I mounted my animal and rode out 
into the cold, dark world, watched and followed 
by the old faithful house dog. I could not help 
thinking that — 

Three friends has man along- life’s jog, 

His mother, money and his dog; 

And than the last no truer friend 
Follows him unto the end; 

And only he is e’er inclined 
To leave his own for humankind, 

A few days’ journey and the mule brought me to 
the Mississippi Eiver, where I traded the hybrid 
for a bale of cotton, which I decided to ship to 
New Orleans. Spying a steamboat headed that 
way, I hailed the Captain, who informed me that 
he was loaded down but would make room for me 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


9 


among tlie roustabouts. As myself and bale were 
like the American Union, one and inseparable, I 
declined passage and awaited another boat, which 
finally landed us in the Crescent City. 

Timidly I edged my way through its crowded 
streets until I found a purchaser for my cotton.. 
On the front of a dingy-looking building appeared 
the following : 


Nicholas Buymuch, 
ADVANCES MADE ON COTTON. 

I 


I walked in and beheld drowsily seated upon the 
counter a rusty little man, imperturbed as the 
corpse of a frozen dummy, and the unflattered 
image of despair. On acquainting him of my busi- 
ness his face lit up like a toper^s in sunlight ; and 
he smiled on me like an editor on a new subscriber 
as he informed me that he would sell it that even- 
ing to a blind man and to appear in the morning 
for the proceeds. I “appeared’^ — when he said: 

My charges are, for drayage, two dollars ; wharf- 
age, three dollars; storage, four dollars; shrink- 
age, five dollars; brokerage, six dollars; and 
freightage, seven dollars. Whatdl you take the 
balance in 

Fightage ! yelled I ; but he tickled my palm 


10 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


with a twenty-dollar bill, which I accompanied 
down Canal street, keeping my hand on it lest the 
wind might blow it out of my pocket. 

Presently a well-dressed man seized me by the 
hand and shook it fervently, remarking as he did 
so: “Mr. Jones, you know not the sublime pleas- 
ure this meeting gives me, nor my anxious solici- 
tude for you as well as all young mariners on this 
bubble of the universe.’’ 

Not being so ubiquitously cognomened, nor 
over-assured at the intrusion, I reminded him 
mildly of the fact ; that doubtless he mistook me 
for my neighbor Jones, who resembled me some 
and was much noted for his verbosity. Where- 
upon he so obsequiously begged my pardon that he 
rather ingratiated himself in my favor, and I 
seemed to see in the face of a stranger the feat- 
ures of a friend. 

To convince me of his acquaintance with Jones, 
he said : “ Smoking the fellow’s pipe one day, with- 
out his knowledge, he blurted out, ‘ What unscrup- 
ulous villain had the audacity and purloining- 
qualities to abstract my fumigating apparatus 
from its proper; habitation ? ’ After telling him to 
contract his language and expand his meaning, he 
yelled, ‘ What d thief stole my pipe ? ’ ” 

After thus familiarizing himself, he inquired my 
name, which I told him. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


11 


‘‘ said lie, “ I knew him well — a son of the 
old man’s ; how you favor. Am glad to meet you 
• (shaking my hands again) and hope to be of service 
to you while in the city. By the way, Mr. Wine- 
bruiser, hold this two-hundred dollar check as se- 
curity for a loan of twenty dollars until the bank 
opens, and I will accompany you this evening to 
the festivities.” 

His bland and insinuating manner was too much 
for my unsophisticated youth, so I handed him the 
money, which I supposed was amply secured by 
the check. It is needless to say the check was 
spurious, or intimate that if the city was offered for 
a postage-stamp I could not buy a shingle oft* its 
poor-house. Wrested of everything but charac- 
ter — the impress which gives to this dross its cur- 
rency — I bided fate and waited, like Micawber of 
old, for something to turn up. 


OHAPTEE II. 

Soon want and loneliness overtook me, and the' 
following lines oozed from my troubled brain : 

THE BISCUITS OF HOME. 

The biscuits of home ! What features return 
Afresh from the ashes of memory’s urn, 

As needy we struggle beneath the great dome 
And fondly remember the biscuits of home! 

The biscuits of home! How vivid they seem 
Away in the chaos of this hazy dream, 

When hunger distresses this animate loam 
And memory miiTors the biscuits of home ! 

Alas, many find in the cottage of old 
A void in the kitchen, an oven long cold, 

And miss, sorrow-laden, as thither they roam. 

The hands that once molded the biscuits of home! 

###***** 

There is a peculiar solace and a melancholy pride 
in the thoughts of home. No wonder that I, with- 
out one, basked abstractedly in its fleeted joys V 
Sacred ties of childhood ! Hallowed scenes of art- 
less youth ! In your contemplation how present 
gloom is dispelled by gleams of the past. What 
fond associations re-anchor in the mystic haven of 
the mind ! What faded images are mirrored bask- 
ing in the splendor of glowing beauty! 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


13 


Admiring people dressed in dresses, I wandered 
about all day until tbe sunlight had faded from the 
vault above, when for the first time I felt that 
strangeness of feeling which one experiences away 
from home, friendless and penniless. In my ab- 
straction I jostled against a small boy carrying 
several kittens, when a stranger slapped me on the 
shoulder and said : 

“ Contemplating the embryonic development of 
feline propagation, eh ?’^ 

As I turned to the speaker he thrust into my 
pocket a five-dollar bill, remarking as he passed 
from view : 

“ Precocious entity of evoluted protoplasm, meet 
your benefactor on this territory two hours after 
the diurnal luminary shall have sought his noc- 
turnal habitation behind the occidental horizon, or 
demise.’’ 

Being sadly in need, I sought no explanation, 
but pushed the money further into my pocket. 
Though taught to be slow to take when strangers 
haste to give, its influence with me then weighed 
no more than a dust in the balance. I was hungry, 
and seemed to be vacant from toe to cranium, for 
I had eaten nothing for breakfast, the same for 
dinner, and what was left for supper. I could have 
eaten almost anything, from a stove to an ice-house. 


14 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


“ Ham and Eggs daubed on a window across 
the street so attracted my attention that, essaying 
to cross, I stumbled into the gutter, transposed 
ends, and went to my ears in mud. Before gravity 
asserted itself myriads of erratic luminaries in my 
ocular system argued the advent of latent as- 
tronomy. 

At this juncture a superanuated jackass took 
fright at my droll way of perforating America and 
trampled on a darkey with a coop of chickens. 


The bipeds sought shelter where Peter Meinheer 
Was freighting a vagrant with pretzel and beer, 

And trying to tenant the tavern-de-slush, 

Ruptured an eye of the dealer in lush, 

Who, frenzied at this and the jubilant tramp. 

Started in earnest to bulldoze the camp. 

Said he : 

‘‘ You spend fen ten cents und make fen two dol-^ 
lars noise. I bes a crowd, von awful mob mineseif, 
so I scatter you ouit mit der street inside.’^ 

After which he struck him with a lump of lim- 
burger cheese that would drive a dog from a tan- 
yard. Then they began caressing each other with 
beer-glasses, bottles and other articles of warfare, 
while the policeman slumbered in the opposition 
saloon. A crowd gathered about them like voters 
around a keg of beer. Pending the affray, I was 
pitched into a wagon and driven off*, guarded by 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


15 


two of the most cadaverous looking villains that 
ever pulled a trigger or hied a nigger. 

A pick and shovel collided with my shins in the" 
darkness, and I thought I was, like a weaned child, 
a gone sucker. Though I prayed for release and 
essayed to escape, they only choked, and tied me 
for annoying them. 

After hours of weary travel, we halted near a 
new-made grave in a cemetery. Their unholy pur- 
pose was then disclosed, and I was ordered to 
unearth the grave, which I did with reluctance,, 
trepidation and a shovel. As I struck the coflBn 
the light went out, and our leader said : 

“ The flatulence of ethereal realms has breathed 
over illuminated space a sombre gloom.’^ 

Weird and ghostly a form appeared from behind 
a tombstone and faced the speaker, who yelled : 

“ Mother-in-law ! ” and fled precipitately, his com- 
panion and Winebruiser, like gamblers, following 
suit. 

Thenceforth I carried about me considerable 
veneration for that mighty civilizer — wife^s mother. 

Thus freed from the vandals, I wandered through 
forest, glade and bog until morning. While passing 
over a swamp about daybreak I sat down on a 
seeming log and began whittling on it, when it 
moved off; but I made no objection, as it was. 


16 


TIMOTHY WINEBRXJISER. 


going my way, until it went under, submerging me 
in the “yellow scum of the stagnant pooP^ and 
leaving me on my own resources, as it were. I 
had been oppressing the back of an alligator, which 
soon made for me; but I reached terra firma in 
safety, when I stepped into a ponderous bear-trap. 
The alligator followed to take me in as gastric bal- 
last, but as he opened his spacious jaws an erring- 
shot spoiled his appetite. Immediately a native, 
pointing a shot-gun at me, advanced and said : 

“ Though yer a hoss-thief, yer cussed lucky, fer 
you are the first one I missed killin’ fer twenty 
year.” 

Then, releasing me from the trap, he led me to a 
cross-road tavern, where the most hideous set of 
mortals that ever issued from the womb of human- 
ity were crowning the night’s wassail. On enter- 
ing, my captor said: 

“ Pards, we’ll irrigate before stringin’ this un. I 
diskivered him near the stable spilin’ as much to 
back a nag as I am to licker.” 

Surrounded by danger and villains, I said : 

“ Grentlemen, I am as innocent of this charge as 
you are of a desire to hang me unlawfully, and ten 
thousand horses, multiplied by a like number of 
kingdoms, would I give to have this fact anchored 
in your bosoms.” 

a 


TIMOTHY WINEBRITISER. 


17 


This laudatory gush tickled their vanity, for even 
•the savage is fond of it. 

“ Let^s argify the case,’^ said one. 

“ I endoss argify-(hic)-cation,’^ said another, fall- 
ing over a drowsy companion, who, taking umbrage 
at the seeming affront, blustered out ; 

“ Ibn howlin’ Jim, a whirlwind in my quietest, 
was born in a cyclone by the light of a diamond, 
can jump higher, dive deeper, and come out dryer 
than any critter on the foot-ball. I’ve chummed 
with Joe Destruction, but one hot day we melted 
and run together, and now I’m two men ; am a war- 
rior, and peace troubles my mind; can chew a 
mountain and digest an earthquake; am a hurri- 
cane in flesh, stuffed with volcanoes and seasoned 
with thunderbolts. I feed on slaughter, and am a 
Vesuvius on pegs. If you don’t believe it, feel 
those annihilators.” 

“ I’ll sorter accommodate yeh, and paint up yer 
complexion,” said the other, who, by a stunning- 
blow knocked the other’s nose around to his left 
ear, when began such a mutilation of flesh as would 
uppall a cannibal. The others joined in, and began 
an indiscriminate reduction of the census. 

The recounter lent migration to my pedal end, 
and quicker than a tramp could lick up a hot dinner 
I vegetated on safer territory ; but not without a 
wound, disproving me a Sitting Bull. 

B 


18 


TIMOTHt“ WINEBRUISER. 


Freighting the thought that bitterness here is"' 
sweetness above, I limped to a contiguous village 
and applied to a Mrs. Bush for breakfast ; but, as 
she was having a twig and no bread at home, 
♦ I switched off to a hotel kept by a 5 oung widow, 

whose profusion of jewelry bespoke more gold 
than mourning, and ordered breakfast, intimating 
that for two days I had feasted on atmosphere^ 
My wants were sparingly supplied, and when her 
hand trembled when passing me the third cup of 
coffee, I enlarged my gastric capacity to its utmost 
and wrapped myself around everything eatable on 
the table. Although an epicurean carver, I left no> 
chips. 

As the last crumb dropped down my shirt-collar 
an individual, whose very vision seemed to see 
cremation in eternity, entered and blathered as 
follows : 

Ye churlish mortals who dispense 
Slander to the morbid sense. 

Who often measure excellence 
By meters of your ignorance; 

Who often have in j’our defense 
Invaded realms of iimocence— 

Attention, while 1 operate 
A motor fc r propelling fate. 

This engine of supernal gear, 

When watered by a maiden’s te ai- 
ls heated by a virgii.’s blush, 

And quickly stopped by frigid gush — 

’Twill dry the Styx, and e'en devour 
Heel-hies ’round the feet of power,, 
r it is 


» 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


19 


Here tliree men entered and proceeded to bring 
him back to the lunatic asylum — he was the mad 
poet — from which he and another had escaped, and 
were taking me for his companion, when the widow 
interfered and broomed them away. Thus was my 
first friend a woman. Ever faithful and sacrificing 
woman, who first meets us with the tears of joy, 
and last parts from us with the tears of grief — 
slaving worker from the bib to the shroud — how 
insignificant is man in thy greatness ! How you 
lead from out the mire the infant and the sire ! 
Your cares alike engage the idiot and the sage. 
Sweet solacer of woe, unto thee we owe promotion 
here below. No degredation too low to reach into 
and reclaim, and kiss to your bosom thy fallen one. 
How reverse of man, with his multiplicity of oppo- 
sites. Of her, should towards us come a fatal dart^ 
woman would shield, e^en with her heart. Of him, 
take an eel by its tail and a man by his heart, and 
a holder of nothing thou art. 

In paying for breakfast I handed the proprie- 
tress a five dollar bill, on which she observed a 
mark, which she remarked a marksman named 
Marks, of Marksville Market, had marked, remark- 
ing that she should mark well the remarks re- 
marked by whoever remarkably returned it. 

I remarked a remark that introduced our intro- 
duction, and that evening I took her to church ; or,, 


20 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


rather, she took me, for I knew no more about the 
locality than a negro knows about his grandpa. 
Going and coming, sweet words fell from her car- 
mine lips like fragrance from the honey-suckle, and 
I could not help liking the sly little widow, the gay 
little widow, the love-teeming widow who hung on 
my arm. Being considerably more than a little 
smitten, and having my name shook out of me with 
ague, I concluded to linger with her and await 
events. 


CHAPTER III. 


One evening, while the widow and I were ex- 
changing sweet exchanges in the parlor, a man, 
whose massive skull divided a dilapidated hat and 
about ninety pounds of flesh and bone, inserted 
his head and said, after inquiring for a lawyer : 

“Me and a Yankee peddler of post-holes and 
dog-barks while huntin’ woke up a deer, an’ I fired 
an’ didn’t shoot an’ killed him, an’ shot again and 
hit him perzacly where I missed afore, when the 
Yank, bein’ on the road, choked him with wagon 
tracks. Now who bosses the buck ” 

Being in the infinitive mood, having no respect 
for number and person, I essayed to test with a 
number nine brogan the resisting force of his pos- 
terior, but his dexterity precluded the experiment. 

Though I knew no m.ore law than an ex- Aider- 
man, this incident and the demand for a lawyer in 
the village induced me to hang out — 


T. WTNEBRUISEU, Attornf.y. 


over my re cm door. After several days of read- 
ing and cegitating over unintelligible pages of 


22 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Blackstoiie, I pensive sat and longed to see the 
victim of my primal fee. 

One afternoon, while feeling as if the world had 
fallen from under me and left me dangling to the 
thread of despair, a woman entered and said, ex- 
citedly : 

“ Jedge, here’s a dollar. My brag rooster, while 
lookin’ about for suthan to do, left his head in Doc 
Godfrey’s barnyard — that is, was headed off ; or, in 
book talk, was ’sassinated by Godfrey. He was a 
major bird, Oap’n, an’ I want it gineraled in law.” 

Puffed with suppressed laughter, I took the case 
(though foul), and appeared in court like one teem- 
ing with forensic lore. The evidence was against 
us, but poverty on one side and glory on the other 
braced me in the cause. So, with pompous air. I 
declaimed as follows : 

“Yes, gentlemen of the jury — flaunting before 
them a manuscript of voluminous proportions — it 
is here alleged that the defendant organized him- 
self into a committee of one for the purpose of 
decapitating the plaintiff* ’s chanticleer, much to 
the discomfort of sundry fowls in the neighboring 
barnyards, and also to the plaintiff’s peace of mind 
at four a. m., on missing the musical notes of the 
afore-mentioned biped. Can you, gentlemen, in 
fancy trace the executive skill and public service 
of one, the most ambitious of whose kind dare not 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


23 


question his prerogative, and not feel in your im- 
maculate bosoms real sorrow at his decease; or 
see him consigned to the guillotine, without award- 
ing us damages'? Imagine the importance and 
social position of the deceased ; the contingencies 
that may arise over the loss of a leader ; the loss 
and inconvenience to his relicts; the contentions 
of aspiring chanticleers during the interregnum; 
that, in anticipation of the democratic victories, 
the plaintiff had calculated to have that indispens- 
able member of the barnyard triumphantly en- 
sconsed on the apex of the village liberty-pole in 
honor of that auspicious event, and then you will 
but scarcely perceive the destructive devastation 
of the villain, Godfrey ! 

My vaporing so flooded the jury that my client 
was awarded nothing — and two dollars. There- 
after the widow feasted on my corporosity with a 
speculative eye, and in a few days we were mar- 
ried ; but she was stricken with apoplexy and died 
the day after, leaving me to run a hotel and father 
a child I had known but a week. Feeling that I 
would soon follow, a calf-love suggested the fol- 
lowing as my epitaph : 


Tenant of an arid < lod, 

Whicli time may drop into a hod, 
The little dust that crumbles here 
Was drowned in a widow’s tear. 


24 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER 


But mingling with other loveliness weaned mey. 
and her image faded like the wake of a ship. Still 
I regretted to lose her, because she was all the- 
wife T had. 

One eve, beside a placid stream. 

Where flitted scai’ce a sunny gleam, 

I spied within its waters clear 
A lonely maiden bathing near. 

Who laved before my vision bold 
A form outstripping Grecian mold. 

As reveled the seraphic lass 
Before me in the liquid mass. 

I chanced one eye— an only glim - 
On charms that made my senses swim. 

And fairly boiled my very blood 
In passion’s eifervescent flood. 

As rolled the beauty in the brook, 

1 couldn’t help but look and— look. 

When mysteries, unknown before. 

Amazed me as she hugged the shore. 

Where festive minnows ’round her played 
And nibbled at the luscious maid. 

Abashed at each alluring scone 
Displayed by the angelic Queen 
T stole away, lest unaware 
Their winsomeness might gender care, 

For most the ills of human life 
Originate from Adam’s wife. 


This occurred while fishing a few, days after the' 
decease of my transient spouse. My piscatory 
longings were thereby appeased, and I hastened 
home. An individual, whose bread of life seemed 


TIMOTHY WINEBKUISER. 


25 > 


to be cut by a step-motber and buttered by a 
mother-in-law, awaited me in my office. Said he : 

“ Yoidre the lawyer who married the Widder 
Brown, who died suddenly, be yeh?’^ 

Assuming sadness, I answered, yes. 

‘^Well, the fac’ is, Bve been black-balled and 
want it writ up, and our weak pints rubbed up gin- 
erally. Here’s a dollar — an’ write a three-dollar 
‘ get-up ’.” 

As the shadow of the washerwoman was shading 
the threshhold, and being in a sentimental mood, I 
ground out the following, which he contributed to 
the Howling Howler : 

MAN IN THE ABSTRACT. 

In our pilgrimage on this foot-ball, how multi- 
plied are the feelings and weaknesses of men as, 
in our simplicity, we find them in their various 
walks and stations of life. 

The mercenary cuss first arrests our attention as 
he ignores everything and all creation for that al- 
luring nihility, money. 

hlext is the bigot who struts by and passes along 
our thoroughfares as if greatness knew only him, 
and as if others were mere embers to his confla- 
gration ; which, seen through the radiance of true 


26 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


manhood, is but the scintillating coruscation of a 
glimmer. 

Next staggers by one whose tattered garb and 
carmine-hued proboscis indicates a peculiar fond- 
ness for nose-paint, and that the nearest way to his 
affection is down his throat, down which alcoholic 
joy flows as smoothly as rivers of oil down chan- 
nels of glass; and one perhaps who might have 
brightened the pulpit and may yet darken the 
scaffold. 

We next meet, freighting that soul-gnawing par- 
asite, Envy, a person who knew us in our humbler 
growth — when he was a flower and we were weeds — 
•whom a change of conditions has converted from 
a liberal friend to a stinted stranger, and all be- 
cause, to be figurative, the little boy to whom he 
showed his watch at school has now the watch and 
a factory besides. 

But the most utteily despicable of all these is he 
who, to satisfy the cravings of personal spite, 
smirches another’s character, abridges his liberty 
and degrades his manhood by black-balling him 
from a society which had found him worthy and 
qualified. Such a man would sell for hay the grass 
on his grandmother’s grave. 

A law prohibiting the sale or giving away of 
spirituous liquors, unless prescribed by a physician, 
was passed in the village ; and, noticing that some 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


27 

used water only for wasMng and cooking purposes 
and kept as full of hope and old rye as before, I 
investigated its operation. I ate a bait of fish and 
stupefied violators thus wise in the Grabville Growl : 

LOCAL OPTION. 

A peaping Tom, while prying- T-ound 
Where i-ura by law should not abound, 

Sauntered in where Peter Sug-gs 
Prospered by the sale of drug-s; 

And suavely told that Knight of Pills 
The symptoms of malig-nant ills 
Endured by him both nig-bt and day, 

Which naught but whisky could allay. 

Now Peter is, like all mankind. 

Inflated with an eriing mind. 

For, on this statement, he instanter 
Preferred him a full decanter. 

Saying-, too, that his profile 
Indexed the need of it the while; 

That when again he felt depressed 
To step around for Suggs’ best. 

He entered next where Simon Kay 
Vended cider o’er the waj'. 

Whose rapid sale cf it implied 
He kept the stuff well fortified, 

And hinted that at any rate 

He’d hai'bor there a whisky straight. 

In deference to a turgiJ head— 

Whereon our Simon slyly said : 

I dare not sell or give away 
The article for which you pi ay. 

But should the same be taken when 
My back is turned (he turned it then), 

I’m not to blame by present law 
For overt acts I never saw.” 

Whereupon he drank immense 
And left behind his fifteen cents. 


28 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


My deligiit over my first effort in print was de~ 
lightful, but I lacked that which most writers 
crave, applause. Longing therefor, I disclosed the 
authorship to a street acquaintance, who revealed 
it to those whom I had betrayed. That evening I 
received the following notice : 

Winelbriiise'^ : 

This is writ to warn you that if you be hear to nite you will stretch- 
hemp before morning. So if your boddy is anygud to you tak it 
awa and git. 

ViGIIiANTEHS. 

I “got,^^ and plunged my poor self into the 
darkness. 


CHAPTER IV. 


At sunrise I met an old man sitting on the way- 
side. As I approached, he said : 

“As I admire congenial association, your corpor- 
eality drifting to my relief excites a pleasure, in- 
creased only by apprising you that I am four-fifths 
philosopher and one-fifth poet. Philosophers 
spend their time in finding they know not what, 
and in believing what they do not understand. 
Here is my latest,’’ handing me the following 
eouplets : 

A breath of slander will blow out 
Vii'tue flickering under doub+. 

Scandal whispeiel soon re sounds 
Louder than the j^elp of 1 o inds. 

Ort in public man ignores 
What in private he adoi’es. 

One may find, before the end, 

A s seining foe to be a friend. 

On Cupid’s chin a little dimple 
Makes t! e wisest oftt n simple. 

Not the biid with plumage g ay 
Sings the sweetest night cr day. 

Dunces learn in v i:«dom’.i schc ol ; 

And sages, also, from a fee 1. 

A word of praise at present said 
Exceeds a millioa wl eu we’re dc ad. 


30 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER, 


Every 1 eart and every tong-ue 
Beats and utters for the young-. 

E’en the bee, with honeyed wing^ 

When provoked, imparts a sting. 

However bi-ight, no gem will shine 
Within the darkness of the mine. 

Inside the rags on childly breast 
A nation’s fate may dormant rest. 

A Hash of thought across the brain 
May light the ages in its train. 

Dignity ’s a slippery ball, 

Which, standing on, precedes a fall. 

On reading tliein, I remarked that they were to 
me like a London morn, rather foggy, when he 
said : 

“Ignorance and envy are the foes of genius — 
one is pardonable and the other abominable 
Yours is ignorance.’’ 

I complimented his frankness, when he said: 

“ Candor is the rarest bloom 
That A e getales this side the tomb.” 

Eyeing us both, and continuing, he said: 

“ What diverse conditions — you in verdant youth 
and I in the “yellow sear” and left to die — 

“ Harrowed with ill-gendered ills, 

Uiiknown and lone among the hills. 

Whose very pebbles were to me 
The playthings cf infancy.” 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


31 


Just then three men issued from a thicket and 
forced me into a contiguous cave, strewn with 
skulls, ribs and other fragments of this framework 
of flesh. Inside were two men and women elab- 
orating with wine and song the night’s debauch. 
At first I was terrified, but time and kindness 
made me to their faults a little blind ; for, as the 
eyes become familiar, the mind approves. 

They were counterfeiters — “ queer ” people — and 
the old man was their snare and look-out. They 
forced me into their money-(?)-making business, 
and confined me strictly to “biz” until another 
victim was put in my place, when I was promoted 
by being disguised as an old man and given a cane 
and sent out to dispose of the spurious, guarded 
by a woman sworn to kill me if I should betray 
them. I returned after my first mission with three 
hundred genuine dollars. Gazing on the fruits of 
my first crime, though forced, I became alarmed 
and sighed for liberty, “the prisoner’s pleasing 
dream.” 

As man is ever prone to flattery, I resolved to 
mold adulation into the key of freedom by dedi- 
cating the following verses to our chief, who had 
given me the cane : 


.32 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEE 


THE GIVER OF MY CANE. 

Friends I know I’ve many 
Upon tins arid plain; 

But still there isn’t any 
Like the gi\'er of my cane. 

I hail him as a treasure 
tVhich mortals rarely scan, 

And one who bring-s a measure 
Of the nobleness of man. 

He toAvers without stricture 
Among- his erring- race, 

And has what few can picture, 

A truly honest face. 

Among- this Avorldly faction 
False friends we often gain; 

But still there’s no back-action 
In the giver of my cane. 

He has what few iulierit 
Upon this sui’ging main. 

And that’s celestial merit. 

Fond giver of my cane. 


My verses made no more impression on Mm than 
pebbles on a pyramid, so one day, as he expected 
me to scatter ‘‘ bills like leaves and the world 
was a forest and I owned it, I tried to escape, but 
my guard shot me, and then swore I had insulted 
her. 

People believed her, and I was arrested for as- 
saulting a defenseless woman. A mob surrounded 
me, and several suspended business to suspend 
me, but the Sheriff had a corner on rope and the 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


33 


women wouldn^t loan their clothes-lines, but said, 
if men, they would burst their suspenders or have 
a suspension. 

She also alleged that, as a money-maker, I was 
beating the Government, and had made more 
already than a bank-president could steal. For 
proof she said they needn’t go any farther than 
my pockets — and they didn’t. 

A homely man, under the evidence of a comely 
woman, has no more show than a priest in politics ; 
so, despite my professions of innocence, I was con- 
victed and addressed to a certain institution in 
care of Uncle Sam. 

On the cars for prison, while bewailing my ill- 
luck and ascribing it to mental lethargy, I scratched 
the following on one of the seats : 

Employment ’s enjoyment 
To body and mind, 

While muddles befuddles 
The idle inclined. 

A passenger observed it, and said : 

‘‘ You drop in a thought and stir it to a sea of 
, bubbles. Why not press it to this: — 

“ Indolence entices 
Humanity to vices.” 

Just then the Superintendent of the road entered 

c 


34 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


and took a seat opposite, when an old employe ad- 
dressed him thus : 

“ Gineral, whin I first met ye I had as much sinse 
as yerself, but now I am all sinse-less and little to 
me back, fhile ye have plenty around ye, not to 
hould yer ould bones together, but to kape yer 
maneness and good intintions from fallin^ out. 
Still, for ould friendship — you emptyin’ my pockets 
an^ I fillin’ yours — I ax conducther ; becase, loik 
yerself, I’d niver pass a good thing. I’d be a rail- 
man, always on the track — of a dollar. Loik yer- 
self, I am high-minded — me actions would niver 
rach me moind. I wouldn’t foight, though I’d 
train the mail and punch the fare. D’ ye moind.” 

Eeceiving only frowns, he continued : 

“ If ye refuse me. I’ll run ye fer office. There 
could be worse than ye, but there ain’t.” 

That settled it. Eather than have his spots 
shown in a canvass he promised Pat a train. 

Presently a sudden stop and the crash of timber 
and the wild cries of women and children fearfully 
told we were off the track. Being uninjured, I 
took advantage of the confusion and escaped> 
being again free for new adventure. 


OHAPTEE V. 


As primal gleams of morn 
Illumed the eastern sky, 

A maiden quite forlorn 
And musive met my eye. 

Beside a limpid stream 
Where moss and lilies gi’ew,. 

The damsel seemed to dream 
Of promises untrue. 

No sound was out to mar 
The music of her sighs, 

And e’en the morning star 
Lost lustre by her eyes. 

She heeded not my pace. 

Nor look of fond sui’prisev 

But turned from me a face 
Too bright for mortal eyes. 

O’er dazzled by her charms 
And struck with love’s behest, 

I took her in my arms 
And pressed her to my breasts 

A clasp that made me roar 
And senses running mad» 

Implied that I was o’er 
Fondled by her— Bad! 

He gave me what the granger gave his oats — a 
good thrashing — and agitated his jaws to shake 
out some advice, but he stuttered so, I got out of 
hearing before he could say much. He was inade- 


36 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


qiiately inadequate in gab, and were his movements 
as slow as his speech a shadow would run over 
him. I asked him the distance to the next town, 
but got there before he could tell me. 

I next colonized in a colony which was in rup- 
turing travail over the election of a presiding 
judge, for which candidates were as numerous as 
bed-bugs in a cheap boarding-house. 

In accord with my wonted cheek I entered the 
race against a book-agent and a preacher. My an- 
nouncement, deluged with gushy vaporing and 
turgid pedantry, announced me as a general util- 
ity and combination man of ability and aff-ability, 
and that in my massive cranium alone simmered 
the people’s welfare. My eulogist, the printer, was 
never paid. 

Soon a spirit of complaisance and indiscriminate 
hand-shaking possessed me, and I began lavishing 
smiles on everything and everybody. Although 
scarcely known, and never having committed a 
wrong in life, I escaped not calumny — a tax as- 
sessed against a man for being great. I was 
charged with robbing stages in Texas, killing nig- 
gers in Arkansas, and stealing goobers in Georgia. 
Even the Eoaring Bulldozer printed the following 
against me : 

A DREAM. 

Dreams, though abstract in their nature, are often 
consoling and suggestive, as was the case with the 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


37 


writer recently while basking in one of their airy 
flights. He saw in the Bulldozer, copied from a 
spiritualistic paper, the following appeal to the 
sun, which indicates that Hades is not sufficiently 
warm for one mortal at least : 


SHEOii, Noveml er i, 183'. 

To the Sun : 

Glowing- oib that, left to roam, 

Would ocexns dry as arid foam, 

The rays of your caloric sphere 
Reflect on this froze m( r':al here! 

Timothy Wineukuiser. 


I started to interview the editor, but desisted on 
spying a pistol hanging on the door-latch. He was 
a “ town-painter ’’ of the old type, who used a skull 
as an ink-bottle and hung his “ copy’’ on the skel- 
eton of a delinquent subscriber. He was a b-a-d 
man, but I sent the following to his paper: 


THE COUNTRY EDITOR. 

Ya lipulating rural type, 

He sits behind his sheai*s and pipe 
And clips and puffs to make it “ biz ” 
That other’s brains be counted his. 

He seldom sniffs the musive air 
That circles genius everywhere, 

But rather waits his choice exchange. 
To garble o’er its cheering range. 

Behind his “form” he toils away 
1 o keep outside three m( als a day. 
Save V hen amused by c( raer-roughs 
At pist{ 1 i, knives or fisticuffs. 


38 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEE. 


To advertisers he will state 
His circulation’s vastly great; 

Then, caring not for clique or clan, 

He circulates, a solid man. 

To indicate the mind’s behest 
Of language he is well possessed. 

Which he has loved with constancy, 

’Till made to say, “delinquency.” 

Still withal he typifies 
Every good beneath the skies. 

And though we censure and malign. 

Illumes the way to virtue’s shrine. 

Though “ respectfully declined/^ it evoked such 
a shower of printer's ink that I was politically 
drowned, for the returns showed: For the high- 
est candidate, John Brown, 45; and the lowest, 
T. Winebruiser, 1 — and that I had cast myself. 
(Cheering cheer to the consciousness of a ten- 
dollar printing bill and $0.00 in the Winebruiser 
treasury.) 

Drenched with disgust, I sought a barber — fond 
intelligencer, and one of oily tongue — who has a 
kind look, soft answer, and gentle word for all, 
unconscious of the joys or sorrows that pervade 
the mortal in his chair. After being shaved, I 
proffered him the usual price, when he said : 

“ OwiiJ to elongated visages — increase ob facial 
territory — defeated candidates am charged double 
price.” 

That was the most barber-ous cut of all ; which, 
as I paid him not, he left unhealed. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


39 


Aware that the fruit of despair “ turns to ashes 
on the lips,^^ and that the greater the obstacle the 
more glory in surmounting it, I reinforced my 
energies, and, armed with a law-book, resumed 
law — it having no step-father in the colony. My 
office was under my hat and my library in my 
pocket. Such was my status when a woman with 
two children invoked my assistance. Her hus- 
band had sued for a separation and one of the 
children. She could bear his loss, but not that of 
either child. One was as precious as the other, 
which reminded me that — 

The fragrant flower that bestowi 
Sweetness oa the weed t n 1 r( s ), 

Acts no more impartially 
lhan rcothers to their progeny. 

Two dollars enlisted me in her cause, which was 
to be adjudicated before my successful opponent. 
On entering court, Mirabile diciu, I recognized the 
magistrate as my philosophic friend of the cave 
adventure. The recognition was mutual, but he 
sat throughout the trial as imperturbed as a statue. 
Although he had distressed me, I saw in the rogue 
the promise of friendship. He was no longer old^ 
but had just the freshness for mischief. He de- 
cided for my client, and informed me privately that 
his associates were regaling on prison diet, that he 
had shrouded vice in the cloak of virtue by enter- 
ing the colony in the guise of a clergyman, and that 


40 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


silence relative to liis antecedents would be con- 
sideration for favorable decisions. I abhorred the 
collusion ; but, as “ self-preservation is tlie first law 
of nature,’^ I reluctantly acquiesced. 

It was a litigating colony, and I was besieged 
every day with indignant litigants. I won every 
case, and, like Byron, soon woke up famous. Bare 
success about me rolled and gilded me with others^ 
gold. The world applauds success, good or bad ; 
while the sublimest effort, if unsuccessful, is 
scoffed and laughed at as a bubble of insipid- 
ity, or the vagary of a transcendentalist. 

As friendship dangles on the whim of circum- 
stance and is the varnished boon of motive, friends 
increased with my prosperity and “ bent the preg- 
nant hinges of the knee, that thrift might follow 
fawning,’^ forgetting that I, -‘a clod of wayward 
marl,” also courted power, wealth and flattery. 


Pow^er, a shrine where fawners kneel 
And shower praise they never feel, 
Encumbers oft with evil might 
The weary wing that gives it flight. 

Wealth is but a little gain 
One garners at another’s pain, 

And adds to sorrow as itself 
Multiplies in luring pelf. 

Flattery is a money base 

E’er current with the human race, 

And circulates no little bit, 

And passes, though a counterfeit. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


41 


Although the colony’s staff and oracle, I soon 
became impaled on the icicles of care; for true 
happiness rarely nestles in the breast of power, 
nor is continuous sway ever wrapped in valiant 
clay. 

Our crookedness was becoming more sin-uous, 
and my chicanery occasioned the following in the 
Bulldozer : 


THE LAWYER. 

These lines apply, not to the lawyer, but to the 
one so-called, as they compare like a calcium light 
and a paste diamond. 

Who archly smiles and takes my case 
And vows that he will truth deface. 

And stifles truth that error may 
Vegetate in barren clay? 

The lawyer! 

Who gleans my cash, when knowing well 
That he cannot my guilt dispel, 

And caters to the fox and hound, 

That filthy lucre may abound? 

The lawyer I 

Who of my right and truth complains 
And anchors not where honor reigns. 

And garners pleasure at my pain. 

And deems me then a thing inane? 

The lawyer ! 

Who only plies where actions rhyme 
With feud, and strife, and darksome crime. 

And harbors wrong and spirits fell. 

And when he dies drops into— well? 

The lawyer! 


42 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


I was no more astounded than the philosopher, 
who sent me the following note : 

Winebruiser : 

Your presence being so prolific of barm, your absence from my 
oourt would fructify some good and contribute to the making of an 
honest man— perhaps two. 

Truth, a lustre from the sky. 

However dimmed will never die. 

But penetrate where error plies 
And shows the light of heaven’s eyes. 

J. Brown, 

Philosopher & Pc8. 

Now, Brown was one of those fellows who could 
he honest, provided it paid well; or, in other 
words, dishonestly honest. He pined for an op- 
portunity to rub up his integrity a bit — it was long 
rusty. I gave it to him by locating in a colony far 
away. 

Midway the colonies I met a man of insinuating 
manner and flashy garb, who requested change for 
a thousand-dollar bill. He was in an outlandish 
country, he said, and fearful of robbers he desired 
bills of small denominations. More to display 
than accommodate I changed his bill, which took 
all the money I had, in gold. 

Imagine my chagrin when at my destination the 
bill was pronounced spurious. Thus my ill-gotten 
gains passed into another’s pocket before warm in 


TIMOTHY WINEBEUISEE. 


43 


my own, and broke into my bead the fact that a 
heavy purse is a weighty curse. Hence the fol- 
lowing : 

GOLD. 

An impress of satanic mold 
Art thou, creation-hunted gold 
Which deifies this pinch of earth 
And classifies its current worth. 

You arm the strong, enchain the weak. 

And blanch the ruddy, virgin cheek; 

And most the evil we behold 
Originate from thee, oh, gold! 

Many in this mortal fold 

By thee, alas ! are bought and sold ; 

And yet, despite thy hellish mold. 

We idolize thee, winsome gold! 

Beside my loss, I barely escaped arrest as a 
‘Counterfeiter. 

Being without money, I resolved to teach school. 
It being a moral community, lawyers were not tol- 
erated, for where honor reigns law is tyranny. 

In my examination I was asked the quantity of 
dirt in a hole three feet square, but my knowledge, 
both figurative and holy, could not fabricate an 
answer. Failing as a pedagogue, I hired out to an 
old granger who owned not even a cock to crow 
for day, and whose farm was too poor to raise even 
a disturbance. He induced me to join the grange, 
but I was soon expelled, and I will now reveal its 
.secrets : 


44 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


I was received in the ante-room by a haymaker,, 
who, divesting me of all the tobacco I had, twined 
a potatoe-vine around my body an d fastened a cab- 
bage-leaf over my eyes, that hunger might feel ere 
the eyes beheld the products of agriculture. I 
was forced to knock with my nose several times 
for admission, when I was received on the point of 
a hoe applied to my equator, which was to teach 
me, as that was an instrument of torture to grass, 
so should the manipulation thereof be to my mouth 
and stomach a reminder that I should never eat 
more than I could get. I was then led to the mid- 
dle of the hay-loft to “hurrah’^ the brethren, after 
which I was introduced to the master Cabbage- 
Head in the orient, who demanded of me a chew 
of tobacco, not for any particular use, but as a 
token of my industry. Being divested of the 
weed, I could not comply. He suggested that 
some of the brethren might loan me one, which 
one of them graciously did. Taking a piece of 
water-melon rind out of his pocket, he told me 
that that was not done to trifle with my feelings, 
but to teach me economy. I was then ordered to 
circum-tumble around the Puisant Senior and 
Junior Pumpkin-Growers and return to the Grand 
Weed Torturer for further instruction. He bade 
me kneel on two cross-scythes upon a pile of pota- 
toes and swear by all the power of wasted crops 
that I would be as industrious as a hungry bull in 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 45 

a patch of green corn ; that I would not defraud 
a granger out of the value of even a homestead, 
unless in case of actual self-defense ; that I would 
relieve and stick to a distressed brother like a 
eashier to the bank’s money; and that I would 
support a brother gi'anger for office, he appljdng to 
me as such and I not being a candidate myself. All 
of which I took on myself, under the penalty of 
being tongue-lashed by all the mothers-in-law of 
ereation, and dragged by a jackass over the stub- 
bles of Ghristiandom. I was then released from 
the potatoe-vine and invested with the words and 
signs, and dubbed an everlasting granger. 

Women were scarce thereabouts, so my ears 
stuck out like a donkey’s, one evening, on hearing 
the voices of females bathing in a creek near the 
grange. Drawing near, I aimed a one-eyed peep 
at them, but could not hit them ocularly through 
the trees. 

% 

Unconscious of my peeping, they floated and 
wallowed about like mermaids, leading me to climb 
up on a projecting limb, which soon broke, when, 
splash ! I fell in the water among them. They all 
screamed and ran away but the granger’s wife, who 
walked out slowly, saying : 

Timothy, if I was you, when I went in swim- 
ming again I would peel my duds.” 

That night her husband “ peeled ” ire^ and I left. 


46 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Soon after I intruded on a border settlement,, 
where pistols, bowie-knives and other instruments 
of torture were flashed in dangerous profusion, 
and where I soon collided with a bullet on its way 
to a horse-thief- It struck a revised Testament in 
my breast-pocket, glanced off, caromed on a book- 
agent, and killed a couple of politicians. 

Had I been reading the revision, the reader 
wouldiflt now be reading Winebruiser. 


GHAPTEE VI. 


Birthdays are the mile-stones along life’s high- 
way, and I had passed the twenty-fourth, when I 
began to realize the responsibility of manhood and 
the indirectness of my pilgrimage. Though start- 
ing out on the straight track, I tried so many 
switches that my progress was delayed by having 
to back out so many times on the main line again. 
So, walking out erect where once I crept, I re- 
solved anew to push Winebruiser to the front. 
But he was handicapped by fate, and my effort was 
as a breath in a cyclone. I courted recognition in 
the world, but my pretensions met such indiffer- 
ence that I scarcely received the sunshine of a 
frown. 

Finally, after months of struggle, I wrote to the 
philosopher, who answered as follows : 

Winebruise^ : 

Your departure has enabled me to walk into the favor of my peo- 
ple like a bather into water. I am fixed. You seem unhappy. No- 
wonder, as happiness pivots on such smallness that— 

A little drop of sorrow drowns 
Present joy, if the future frowns. 

But don’t bother bother until bother bothers you. Ignore the throng; 
’tis mostly wrong. 

Reveal your mind to none— through silence much is won. 


48 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Run not into debt— unless you can walk out of it. 

Forget to-day’s sorrow and brighten to-morrow by sunning the 
present and clouding the past. 

In your ventures be meek, but dignifled; and remember that a 
Thomas-cat with arched back upon a rail-fence is not a camel. The 
little cur that he spits at may do more than bark. 

In your researches, remember that Inquiry is a surer guide than 
conjecture. Still, take naught for granted, for the more you believe 
the less you know, and the less you believe the more you know. 

In your intercourse remember that friendship, like ripened fruit 
on a tree, will fall by shaking, but is best left to its own gravitation. 

In your marital relations don’t blame your mother-in-law for loving 
your wife. She loved her before you did. 

Belittle no one— the biggest dog has been a pup. 

Don’t kill yourself trying to live. Above all, don’t be a corpse. 

When life’s thistles loom around 
Owe them to uncultured ground. 

When misfortune keeps you do"^'’. 

Ne’er resent it with a frown. 

When you thrust at envy’s shield. 

Know that it will never yield. 

When you think you’ve mounted fame, 

Know that still you’re lowly game. 

When your lover answers, nay. 

Know the darling means it aye. 

When you pant for glory here. 

Think how fleeting is its cheer. 

When acquiring worldly gain. 

Think how much you others pain. 

When 3'ou flatter and beguile, 

Know that false you are the while. 

J. Brown, 
Philosopher & PoS. 


TIMOTHY W1]SEBRUISER. 


4 <> 

About tliat time my heart anchored in a dam-sel 
named Mattie, whose beauty almost mirrored the 
sunbeams. One evening as upon my knee sat 
lovely Mat, and having thus a mat-inee, a stern 
advance against my pants soon made me feel 
pa-thetically. He ap-parent-ly welcomed me hencCy 
for, aided by pedals immense, he lifted me over 
the fence. She had little sympathy for me, and for 
a time I could see pimples on her nose. 


If e’er we court the sisters nine, 

’Tis mostly when in love’s confine. 

So, snifting musive air, after my repairs I in- 
dited her the following verses : 

LOVING STILL. 

Deceitfully you wing-ed the dart 

That struck the flint that seared my heart,. 

And bent me at your fickle will; 

And yet, withal, I’m loving still. 

Tho’ fairer eyes may mirror thine. 

And in thy favor brighter shine, 

And dazzle, beam and glow at will, 

I cannot be but loving still. 

Should you contemn, and lovers sigh 
In fond embrace, as once did I, 

And fawners kneel, and coo and bill. 

Remember I’ll b 3 loving still. 

Should beauty fade, and malice frown. 

And gather thistles for thy crown, 

And slander sear and envy chill. 

You’ll find me true and loving still. 


D 


50 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEE. 


And when is rent the chain of years 
That links us to this va'e of tears, 
I’ll quickly, fondly tu -n to thee. 

And love t'lee in eternity. 


But they only multiplied trouble, for her big 
brother flogged me to within a fi action of icy 
life, and would have severed its remaining three d 
had my legs not ran me off to safety. 

The locality being dange:’ously safe, I scampered 
away, my love for the maiden decreasing as space 
intervened. 


CHAPTER Vir. 


With no settled purpose nor objective point, 
I trudged along until overtaken by a wagoner, 
rather teeming with leg- worry, who gave me a ride 
to his residence. On the way he said: “You seem 
to be a (hie) city chap, and can teach school, I 
reckon?^’ 

I intimated that I could. 

“ Well (hie), Pm one of the directors, and you are 
hired. We want no (hie) poetry nor geography and 
.sich (hie) hifulutin^ stuff, but hard (hie), substantial, 
bed-rock teachin\’^ 

I assured him with longitudinal vocability that 
I was a pedagogue who would create a mental 
revolution in stupidity itself, and under whose 
tuition a dunce to-day would be seeking the Presi- 
dency to-morrow. 

He believed me, and thought the community 
indebted to him for the acquisition of such an 
intellect. 

He invited me to linger with him during the 
school session. I lingered. His family consisted 
.of himself and wife and wife^s mother, who had 


52 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


about as much use for him as a rich thief has for 
an honest dollar. 

After retiring the first night I overheard the 
following interrogatories from his wife: 

Tell me, darling-, tell me true. 

Why so often from my view? 

Why your eyes and nose so red 
And at morn an aching head? 

Tell me if another smiles 
Fonder on you in her wiles? 

If the one you claim your own 
Seemingly has colder grown? 

Tell me, darling, if you can. 

Why you are a gloomy man? 

If you think Hymenean worth 
Darkens round the cottage hearth? 

New, in all sincerity. 

Dearest William, tell to me. 

Why you’ve sorrowed sir.ee j'ou saw 
Yorr own darling-mother-in 1 iw? 

As the last word was uttered he broke into* 
intolerable snoring. It was doubtless a painful 
term to him. 

In the morning I was introduced to my tutelage 
as Prof. Winebruiser, some of whom were in studies 
beyond my knowledge. But I was equal to the 
occasion. I turned them back, as I archly informed 
them, to eradicate imperfect knowledge and to 
introduce the Winebruiser system. The deception 
succeeded. They advanced and so did I ; for, as^ 
we instruct others, so do we, ourselves. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


53 


I soon became noticeably intimate with a man 
who was very unpopular in the neighborhood, 
whose defamatory utterances and depreciation of 
his neighbors had socially ostracised him. Although 
partly right, he knew not that even truth is not 
always palatable, but is prudently stifled, often at 
a sacriflce. 

Our association became the topic of evil gossip, 
and ultimately evoked the following in the Bug- 
town Bugle : 

Bugtown is immortalized ! The holy land had its 
exemplars of fidelity in David and Jonathan; 
Sicily, in Damon and Pythias, but Bugtown caps 
the climax in Hon. I. D. Fame and Prof. M. T. 
Head, prodigies of social gravity who voraciously 
browse in the vale of credulity. 

A coupling more marvelous than that of the Sia- 
mese twins links this inseparable twain. As they 
wear out in maddening orgies the ‘^wee small 
hours,^^ something like the following, paraphrased 
from Johnson, grates on the ears of a sleepless 
Tom : 

Great and hig’li, 

The world knows but two, that’s you and I; 

Our roofs receive us not; on air we tread, 

And at each step we feel our aivanced heads 

Knock out a star in heav^en! 

Their footprints are sacred impressions; their 
bosoms heave with the spirit of the Olympian 


54 


TIMOTHY WINERUISER. 


gods — ergo, we would not permit tlie winds of 
heaven to blow against their forms too roughly. 
1^0 wonder we plebians are illumined by such orbs 
of profundity. 

Go where you will and they are there. Yes,, 
gaze on the mourning-stool at the foot of the 
sanctuary, where meek repentance is drenched 
with holy unction, and these transcendentalists 
are — not there. 

It was fiery lightning to the “prodigies,’’ and 
soon emitted the spark of our banishment. 

I wrote of my predicament to the philosopher, 
who answered thus : 

Winehi'uiser : 

Our weal or woe rests upon the character of our acquaintances, for 
.we pai’take of a little of it from each one. Man’s company is his- 
character, for— 

Whether ’round the hearth or heather, 

Kindred spirits run tog-ether. 

Though others of unlike creation 
Suffer by the aggregation. 

Acquaintance, Friendship and Love are the triumvers of our con- 
duct and the stairway of our happiness. We respect the first, admire 
the second and adore the last; and respect, admiration and adoration 
constitute a triune of human excellence. \\ atch a new friend over 
an old acquaintance, and a new love over an old friend. If you can’t 
find a true friend, take none at all; and remember that— 

A faultless friend was never found. 

Nor constancy in mortal mound. 

Nor worldly joy that fadeth not, 

Nor snowy page without a blot; 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


00 


Nor living thing devoid of wortli. 

Nor perfectness upon the earth. 

Nor sweetened draught of virus c’ ar. 

Nor sated heart upon the sphere, 

Norhapp ness obtained with money. 

Nor stingiess bee that freiiihts us honey 

To while away your gloomy hours, I send you a task: 

Pilgrim, find beneath the slcy 
One who never told a lie; 

One who has on land and sea 
Never heeded flattery; 

One whose ever daily walk 
Has the sameness of his talk; 

One who, gaining worldly pelf. 

Loves another as himself; 

One who in this tricky game 
Envies not a rival’s fame; 

One who through this selflsh throng 
Ever renders right for wrong; 

One whose erring heart and brain 
Never sues for earthly gain; 

And you’ll have discovered worth 
Scarcely found upon the eai-th. 

J. IJftOWN, 

Philosopher & Po8. 

I paused over Lis “task^^ and attributed my 
waning poiinlarity to iny late friend, wLo charged 
me likewise. Eecriminations soon converted our 
friendship into mutual hate. After exhausting 
Webster for epithets, by way of emphasis we en- 
gaged in physical combat. For four minutes we 
pummelled each other, to the gratification of sun- 
dry lookers-on, who craved our extinction and 
offered such encouragement as “Stick to him, 


56 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Sweet, if you do get soured,” and “Go in. Wine- 
bruiser; don^t leave enough of him for a Coro- 
ner to hold an inquest over.” Finally, as one of 
Sweet^s digits entered my left optic, I cried 
enough, when he said : 

“ Pm glad of it, for it^s the word Pve been trying 
to think of for the last four minutes.” 

As usual, no police appeared until after the fra- 
cas, when I piled my remains on a couple of legs 
I had and drove off, followed by a long officer who 
long-ed for me, but he was long in getting along, 
and I left him longing behind. 

He caught Sweet, however, and coaxed him to 
jail by digging with a club several holes in his cra- 
nium and then wrapped him up in a cell that had 
the ceiling for a blanket. 

Next morning he swore that the prisoner had 
excavated the excavations himself, and that he 
had blown out one of my lights with his finger- 
nails. Consequently he got ten days, and I got — 
away. 


CHAPTER YIII. 


After days of weary and lonely travel I was at- 
tracted by the following, entrancingly chanted by 
•a sweet-sixteen beauty on the porch of a mansion 
in the suburbs of a city : 


I cannot see as others do, 

And seldom find their vision true, 
But censure spy where many praise, 
And eulogy where stricture laj's. 

I cannot think as others do, 

-Nor imitate their notions new. 

But manifest peculiar tliQught 
Which simple nature early taught. 

I cannot love as others do. 

And never can affection sue. 

Tor courted favors reckon naught. 
And love eternal comes unsought. 

I cannot honor every sigh 
And winsome smile that idle by, 

■For human love is but a fire 
That over-fueled will expire. 

Though I may be a wayward elf, 
Who only cares for erring self. 

And architect of every sham, 

I cannot be but what I am. 


>Her words jingled with my own nature, and I 


58 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


heard from the songster the strange notes of my- 
self. 

Enraptured by her fairy breathings, I entered, 
the enclosure, redolent with flowers of varigated 
hue, and feigned thirst to better view the vocal, 
beauty, who seemed as sweet as a virgin bathed in 
honey. 

As I aiiproached she reclined in delicious aban- 
don upon a sofa of voluptuous drapery. My pres- 
ence disturbed not her composure nor drew 
attention until I had asked for some water.. 
Without arising, and with queenly air, she handed 
me a goblet and pointed to a well in front. As I 
drank and gazed and inhaled the fragrance of sur- 
rounding flowers, I perceived that she was alone in 
the floral paradise. A gust of passion fanned me 
as I surveyed her reclining before me in uncon- 
cerned complacency. i 

Something warmed and swelled the current in 
my veins, and froze my tongue to silence, while 
conscience strayed in guidance. 

Hesitating and drifting in my intentions, I sipped 
and drank, and finally so much that a drowning 
fullness came over me and I fainted to the earth. 

All was blank until morning, when I found my- 
self on a luxurious couch in a room decorated 
with lavish expenditure. Everything indicated the 
wealth of the owner. Downy carpets, massive- 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


59 ^ 


mirrors, chandeliers, statuary, master studies of 
the great artists, and an angePs figure “ waking to 
ecstacy the living lyre,’’ loomed before me in ma- 
jestic grandeur. I felt as if awakened in enchant- 
ment, and the strangeness of the situation struck 
me with amazement. I tried to rise, but sank 
helpless on the pillow. The lady observed my 
effort, and left the room to call her mother. I 
subsequently learned that the apartment was her 
private bed-chamber ; and my feelings on having 
slept on a maiden’s bed can be appreciated by 
only those who have been there. 

She soon re-entered, accompanied by her mother, 
who, as I spoke, exclaimed. 

Why, he is not our lost James, but a stranger.” 

It was then evident I had been mistaken for a 
wild sprig who had early branched off from the 
family tree, but whom they had been expecting to 
switch home. 

“As you have revived,” she continued, “you 
can apprise us of your antecedents, that we may 
know something of you.” 

I truly and plaintively informed them that I 
was — 

Misfortune’s fondled child, 

Amid life’s dreary wild 
From youth astray; 

That, ’lone, uncared and scorned 
By every thisUe thorned, 

I g-roped my way. 


-60 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Also, that I was on the descending grade, and 
found everything greased for the occasion. 

My words enlisted their sympathy and care, and 
they assured me employment if I desired it. 

Paterfamilias then entered and heard my story 
with stoic indifference. With a look that seemed 
to invoice me, he intimated that, although I seemed 
to be a crude chunk of vanity, still a little more 
Tubbing up and down the world would give me 
sufficient polish to reflect my own insigniflcance. 
His repelling manner made me feel as if I was sit- 
ting on a kit of shoemaker’s tools; so I arose to 
leave the premises, when his wife, with some kind- 
ness, pressed me to remain and they would make 
me porter in the store. But deeming her interces- 
sion disapproved by her other half, I pressed on, 
when he seized and spun me around on my heels, 
.and said : 

“ You seem to wrap around a great deal of inde- 
pendence ; but, as you have drifted to my harbor, 
I will charter you to freight boxes, trunks, parcels, 
and so forth, to and from the store, and if your 
timbers justify it, I may increase your sail.” 

Although his voice was kind, his look was sar- 
casm and his manner frozen. I was about to de- 
cline his offer, when a glance from his daughter 
telephoned me to accept. So, not for ‘‘increase of 
sail,” but to bask in her loveliness, I consented to 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


61 


remain anti drudge in his store, the largest in the 
city. 

On assuming my duties, the clerks — two-legged 
lumps of vanity, adorned with fungous mustaches- 
and fragrant with barber-influence — scrutinized 
me with irritating coldness, and shunned me like 
they would contagion. Finally the first clerk con- 
descended to address me, and, as I told him mjr 
career, took me into his confidence. They out- 
dressed the proprietor, and cut an air of amazing 
swiftness. Like topers between acts, they were 
fond of going out, and their expressions of “ cham- 
pagne,’^ “the club,” “jolly good time,” and other 
incomprehensible utterances, induced me to fol- 
low them one night into a place illuminated with 
dazzling splendor, where a heterogeneous mass of 
kindled humanity, from the pubescent lad and miss 
of fifteen to the lascivious lord and dame of fifty, 
tipped glasses, drank their contents, and tripped 
to the seductive strains of sensual music. Scarce 
a creature bespoke that — 


A few compunctious embers 
Yet grlimmered in the soul, 

To show surrounding members 
That virtue was yet whole. 


I observed the minister looking up through the 
bottom of a glass beside a painted siren of twenty. 
Accosting him, I hinted at the incongruity of his. 


€2 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


presence, when he archly whispered that he was 
merely studying human nature and the ways of 
the world, and that, to better inform his congrega- 
tion of the frailties of flesh, he had “just dropped 
in.’^ In the midst of a rounded sentence, admon- 
ishing me of surrounding danger, he was led off 
by the fallen sister to display his parts in the mazy 
waltz, where the carnal-fired swain whirled in dizzy 
ravishment. Like myself, he disliked women — out 
of his reach. 

Presently my master entered with a festive 
widow, smiling at grief, and joined in the festiv- 
ity. Both seemed in their element, and courted 
pleasure with a vim. The clerks sneaked off* to 
another apartment, and I concealed myself behind 
a countryman coaxing virtue (?) with the proceeds 
of a razor-back hog. Surveying that panorama of 
easy manners, I felt convinced that — 


Flowing bowls and festive dames 
Quickly kindle frigid frames; 

That outward manner ne’er reflects 
The purity of either sex; 

That since old Adam played with Eve, 
Man’s been a knave in woman’s sleeve; 
That since the feliow led in fruit 
His devilish bo; s have followed suit. 


Fearing recognition and blushed to virtue by the 
r^evelry beforo m^, I started to leave, when a faded 
beauty whirled me into a set immediately opposite 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


G3 


Jiiy master ! Abashed at my exposure, I resolved 
to emigrate, but, being equally exposed, he fol- 
lowed and promised me that for silence in regard 
to his amour he would make me his secretary and 
detective, which he did. 

Thereafter he was quite idastic to my will, for 
my knowledge of him partly enslaved him. Strange 
that sometimes a knowledge of one will enthrall 
and embarrass, and that on a trivial circumstance 
^fteii hinges our futurity. Truly man and his des- 
tiny are mystically arranged. 

Next morning, while at my desk, the clerks 
.sauntered in so innocently that, were they under a 
shower of holy-water, they would spread their um- 
brellas. Their polished exteriors, contrasted with 
the night’s proceedings, argued strongly that — 

A scentless flower, to the view, 

Often has a lovely hue. 

They had been informed of my promotion, but 
had not realized before that — 

A man may meet as master stei*u 
The slave he once i resumed to spurn. 

Soon the clerks who before despised me began 
to court my favor, while my confidant became re- 
served and distant. Frail mortal, he pitied my 
trouble and envied my success; and reminded me 
that — 

If you'd win man’s little love, 

Sue not below nor yet above. 


64 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Before my promotion I had slept in the store^, 
but after it I was invited to the residence, where I 
was amazed at its spacious parlors and gilded 
chambers, whose occupants, a father, mother and 
daughter, reveled in debilitating luxury, while- 
want and suffering cast their ghostly shadows on 
the threshold, to be spurned from the premises. 

They loved the world not for what they saw, but 
for what they felt. 

The father was President of a savings bank, a 
jobber in stocks, an owner of a railroad — two 
streaks of rust and a right of way — and a cosmo- 
polite generally. He bespoke the couplet of Ana- 
creon : 

“O.ie little hour of joy to me 
Is worth a dull eternity.” 

In his moody hours he sang this song: 

Life seemed once a fruit-tree llcoming-, 

Ripened fruit inviting looming, 

Luscious sweetness bore for me; 

Lavish fell its fruitage mellow, 

Ripening green and golden yellow. 

Yet I te /er shook the tree. 

Long I feasted on its sweetness, 

Joys and pleasures till efifeteness 
Wrought satiety in me; 

Now in autumn, ’mong the thistles, 

While life’s dreaiy storm wind whistles, 

Fruitlessly I shake the tree I 


The mother and daughter, the former a vapid^ 
dame of forty, and the latter a sappy miss of six- 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


65 


leeii, were fond of show, company and festivity 
;and seemed to say : 

Joyous hours are but a span, 

So enjoy them while you can, 

And from the future pleasure borrow. 

Though joy to-day be ill to-morrow. 

My glowing youth and modest manner soon cap- 
tivated the mother, who, in the absence of her 
lord and daughter, often kissed and fondled me in 
love’s caressing, but, knowing not what kissing 
meant, I didn’t trespass worth a cent. Finally her 
ardor froze to hate, and she hinted to her hubby 
that Timothy wasn’t much, no way — too phleg- 
matic, you know. 

But he was busy in politics, and hadn’t time to 
believe her. 

Having occasion to scatter political knowledge 
among scattering politicians in a scattered district, 
he made me chanticleer of the premises while 
away; and how I made those clerks sling ink and 
.calico was a campaign in itself. 


E 


CHAPTER IX. 

I wrote of my success to the philosopher, who 
replied as follows : 

Dear Winebruiser : 

Fortune is like a cow which we expect to come to where we sit 
with a pail to milk her; hut she came, it seems, and to me also. I am 
Mayor of Beanville. I donated to our minister a juvenile canine 
with abbreviated caudal appendage— or, in other words, a bob-tailed 
pup— and he extolled me to his parishioners, and I wag elected with 
enthusiasm and three hundred votes. I threw him a minnow and he 
gave me a whale. 

My subsistence department is replenished twenty-one times weekly, 
and I am on the rise, but not as a sponge of dough, to be cooked 
at my zenith. 

You intimated that you were entering the haven of love, and asked 
in what part of a woman’s anatomy her heart nestled. I must refer 
you to Money, Looks and Flattery, who are its most successful dis- 
coverers. ’Tis needless to refer you to voyager Worth, as the poor 
fellow is generally an unsuccessful explorer. 

Before anchorage, however, know that marrying for beauty is like, 
eating a bird for its sweet singing, and that— 

If a maiden you would charm. 

Very seldom ’bout her stride; 

If a widow you would warm. 

Be quite often at her side. 

Here is my latest: 

YET HOW OFT. 

A cultured plant in life’s estate. 

Despite of frost, will vegetate; 

Yet how oft a blighted stalk 
Falls beside us on the walk. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER, 


67 


Shortest objects in our sight 
Cast long shadows ere the night; 

Yet how oft a gem is passed 
Whose surface has no brilliant cast. 

A fetid weed will often loom 
Higher than a fragrant bloom ; 

Yet how oft a lofty form 
Weathers best the passing storm. 

Clutching fate with hopeful grasp 
Is indeed an empty clasp ; 

Yet how oft a wayward “ clam 
Proffers it an empty palm. 

Truth, however thorny, should 
Never blight for any’s good; 

Yet how oft ’tis shaded by 
Noxious growth ’neath every sky. 

Riches weighed by honor’s weight 
Loses half its current rate; 

Yet how oft we strive to be 
Cloaked in its inanity. 

J. Brown, 
Philosopher and Po8. 

One morning one of the clerks invited me “ in 
for a meal relisher. He winked at a fellow behind 
a cigar and a structure for the support of weary 
elbows, glasses and a decanter, and proceeded tO' 
decant. 

As I had quit — refusing, I crowded down a little 
water, alias lemonade, and he several gulps of sat- 
isfaction, which were so satisfactory that he was 
satisfied to have the liabilities narrated on the 


68 


TIMOTHY WINEBEUISER. 


slate. But the riim-juggier didn’t make his feed- 
ing that way. 

“ I keeps no slate,” said the bartender. 

“ Then put them on ice and they’ll hatch out in 
the sun,” said the clerk. 

“I has no ice fen count books,” growled the 
Teuton, purple with rage. 

“Well,” replied the clerk, “mind them in your 
mind until I’ve a mind to pay you — in my mind.” 

Coming from behind the counter, he said : 

“ Better you pays me, ober I drown you mit spit 
und puild you up flatter as a burying-ground, an’ 
you have no eye more as two fen I preak mine 
nose mit your flst, pooty soon, ain’t it.” 

Whereupon he floored the clerk, and but for me 
wouldn’t have left enough of him to hang a hat on, 
and his subsequency would have been as improb a- 
ble as the probability of a stale egg generating a 
game cock. 

We were all arrested and fined, except the clerk, 
who snatched an infant from a careless nurse and 
strung it over his shoulders to avoid being shot at 
and shook the country. The babe was afterwards 
returned free of harm. So much for bad company. 

During my employment I had not addressed the 
daughter, nor she me, though I had admired and 
oourted her mentally for months. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


69 


Slie was a delicious morsel wrapped up in her- 
self, and I coveted the jiackage. I insinuated an 
acquaintance, which she tinally encouraged, and 
converted iny lustful fondness into honest love. 

If the world was lost through woman, she alone 
can save it; and the pure girl saved and ennobled 
me as I grew under her influence. 

She had a lingering friendship for the fugitive 
clerk, who was a widower, which aroused my jeal- 
ousy, and I indited her this poem : 

Though sage or dunce, 

Man loves but once, 

Despite love’s magic art; 

And closer twines 
Love’s tender vines 
Around the drooping heart. 

As memory roves 
Among the groves 
Where Cupid plumed his dart. 

Who nectar sips 
Fi-om beauty’s lips 
Forgets not evermore 
The. joyous bliss 
Of love’s first kiss. 

Nor the sweetheart of yore; 

So, maiden fair. 

Of him beware, 

He may have loved before. 

Love won by self 
Or luring pelf, 

However cheap, is dear. 

And oft desires 


70 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Much that expires 
As sheds possession’s tear; 
So, winsome lass. 

Beware of brass, 

’Tis gilded often here. 


She perceived in my jealousy something akin to 
love, for which she only pitied me ; but as pity is 
the nurse of love, she ultimately responded to my 
affection like an echo to sound. 

We finally made mutual professions of love, and 
TO wed to share with each other the joys and ills 
which destiny in flesh instills. But we lacked one 
thing to consummate our wedlock, which obtaining 
was the most delicate task of my life; it was par- 
ental consent. Her mother objected and her father 
consented. 

It was soon gossipped that Dora Brown, the 
gushing and accomplished daughter of the Hon. 
Charles Brown was betrothed to Tim Winebruiser, 
an insignificant employe in her father’s store. I 
had frequent tilts with aspiring suitors in conse- 
quence. 

Meanwhile nuptial matters progressed smoothly. 
I was to be interested in the firm and adminis- 
trator of the estate on the death of my prospect- 
ive father-in-law. Fortune was glowing in Wine- 
bruiser. I wrote the philosopher of my coming 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER, 


71 


unification, and requested his attendance. He an- 
swered: 

Winebruiser: 

A gentleman in the vicinity of a tan-yard, on spying a bovine- 
oaudal appendage extending through a knot-hole, exclaimed : 

“ Extensive have been my studies, from the characters on a bar of 
soap to the logician’s cause and effect, from Locke on the under- 
standing to Darwin on the evolution of protoplasm, but I fail to see 
how that cow got through that knot-hole.” 

Such is an allegory wherein you are the caudal and I the puzzled 
spectator. Your glory confounds me, and thereby hangs a tale which 
you will doubtless detail when 1 visit you. 

Your ascension reminds me of the fortune of man, which, like the 
felloes of a wheel, are up or down, according to the turn of circum - 
stances. Hence, be slow in your ascent, dear friend, for once on the 
summit you’ll surely descend. 

Birth, marriage and death —the three gi'eat periods of man— are 
solemn changes for good or evil. Two are before you; but the one 
which will sweeten or embitter your future is seemingly near. A1 
though a heavenly dispensation, it corrupts or purifies us for the 
last, the solemnest of all changes. Therefore hesitate before taking 
that fatal or joyous step; then if Hymen beckons you thence, marry 
and stick to her like a thorn in a boy’s foot, and may your future be 
as velvety as your young cheeks, illumined by the flashes of gracious 
fate, perfumed with the fragrance of perennial joy, and the shad- 
ows of age be brightened by the heart’s fond fruition, duteous 
progeny. Cast an eye or two adown the following: 

Apprehension, strung by tension 
Of premonitory ills. 

Sues to mention by invention 
Every care that fate instills. 

Vain pretention ! 

Adulation is a ration 
Which dissemblers issue plain. 

Unto station for creation 
Of unduly i-endered gain. 

Dire potation ! 


72 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Indiscretion during session 
Of its sorrows— deemed severe— 

For repression weds oppression 
To a heart that proffers cheer. 

Self aggression! 

Apprenensively yours, J. Brown, 

Philosopher and Po8. 

At last the nuptial day arrived, accompanied hy 
a miscellaneous aggregation of staring mortals^ 
who shamed me almost into retirement. Caloric 
youth and frigid age edged in to survey Wine- 
bruiser and his prospective bride. Her mother 
was beside her, weeping, and her father was re- 
galing his friends in the parlor. 

We were at expectancy’s zenith when the minis- 
ter arrived, an hour late, and took a position before 
us. After viewing us long ^nd solemnly, he put 
the usual question : 

“Are any present who have reasons why this- 
couple should not be married? If so, let them 
now speak or forever hold their peace.” 

At its enunciation an electric shock charged me 
with trepidation. Immediately a robed figure is- 
sued from the throng, and said : 

“ There are.” , 

It was the philosopher ! My almost wife ex- 
claimed, 

“ Dear brother ! ” 

And fainted in his arms, while his parents encircled 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


73 


him in loving embrace. I was as much out of 
place as crape on a plug-hat, and saw through it 
all; he was their prodigal son. He quickly disen- 
gaged himself and dashed at me with a poinardy 
when I jumped through a window and caromed on 
a fat woman who couldn’t shrink enough to enter 
the house. Quicker than a toper can down a cock- 
tail he leaped after me and mired in the jaws of a 
bull-dog that was long short on eating. The canine 
feasted on him until the female with legs like beer- 
kegs had kicked me into an hour’s start of him. A 
high-kicking kicker, she put her kicks where they 
did the most good, and kicked me out of Kick- 
apoo — the name some fellow had tagged to the 
town and then kicked himself out of it, perhaps. 

Feeling as touchy as a darkey with an armful of 
eggs in his pocket, I felt the appropriateness of 
the name and the prodigiousness of the “ feat,” 
and haven’t liked a shoemaker since. 

For days a chair was superfluous, and I took my 
meals and rested like a tailor, standing. 

Like a bald-headed man at a show, I sought the 
front-(t)-iers, and next settled in an unsettled set* 
tlement. Being tall, I stood high among the set" 
tiers, who were Indians, and too unneighborly to 
pull out the arrows they pushed into me. 

I left the neighborhood, as I could no more live 
with my neighbors than a cross-eyed man can look 
another straight in the face. 


CHAPTER X. 

As I trudged away for new exploits I felt that — 

Friendship in the warmest friend 
May be poisoned in the end. 

And that — 


Upon this ark of sorrow, 

Despite its motley crew 
Warring for each downy berth 
That meets the erring view, 

There’s plenty sail and room enough 
To freight us over thrice; 

And yet, aias, some mariners 
Must drift upon the ice. 

One evening, while musing on the roadside, the 
following filtered through my melancholy : 

MEMORY. 

As memory takes its transit 
O’er regions lately crossed. 

It cuts as with a lancet 
When meeting treasures lost. 

But as it advances 
To years of early glow. 

The greater it enhances 
The worth of long ago. 

A mother’s adoration, 

A father’s smile of praise, 

Are seen in its migration 
To scenes of other days. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


75 


Clearly is the wild- wood, 

And flow’ry cot of youth, 

Shown as when in childhood 
We harbored nearest truth. 

The words that fell sincerely 
Around the olden hearth 
Are echoed quite as clearly 
As after given birth. 

E’en the castles airy 
Which crumbled as we grew, 

Are pictured with their fairy 
Scenes of every hue. 

Though it often brightens 
Our pathway here below. 

It is while it enlightens, 

A chronicler of woe ! 

In my weariness I began to nap, when I was 
.stunned by a blow from an escaped convict, who 
.stripped me of my clothing and money and left me 
his striped suit. As it was preferable to disha- 
bille, I donned the filthy garb and tramped on. 

^ Soon I heard the approaching clatter of a runa- 
way steed attached to a buggy containing a woman 
screaming with fright. I dashed in front to stop 
him, but the collision injured me, and I fell sense- 
less to the earth. 

I knew no more till I heard the rattle of clods 
• over me. All was dark and unearthly, and I was 
r suffocating for air. The truth dawned upon me ; I 
was being buried during suspended animation! 
With great effort I burst open the coffin-lid, when 


76 


TIMOTHY WINERUISER. 


the shovellers and attendants fled as if the earth 
had denied me a habitation. Neither naked or 
clad, I arose from my sepulcher and sought assist- 
ance from some passers-by, but they turned me 
over to the authorities as an escaped convict. 

I was attached to a ball and chain lest the wind 
might blow me away, and returned to Kickapoo^. 
the scene of my late exploits, and where the State 
kept corraled such of its malefactors as it could 
catch. 

The warden greeted me kindly, but regretted 
that he could not receive me, as none of his guests^ 
bore my name, and he didn’t know me from Satan’s 
janitor. 

The Apollo-like Constable who had taken me^ 
apologized so apologetically for his mistake that 
he invited me to kick him around several rounds,, 
which I did so vigorously that a big crowd sur- 
rounded us and attracted the philosopher, who* 
stabbed me, and then fled as if lightning was on 
his coat-tail. 

I staggered off several yards, and fell into the 
arms of his sister, who happened to spy me on her 
way to the postofiice. 

There, hanging in her embrace, while my drip- 
ping wound smeared her costly garments, I could, 
not but realize woman’s unrivalled constancy and 
heavenly devotion when once enlisted. She 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


77 


screamed, fainted and fell with me to the pave- 
ment, when a passing team took fright and thun- 
dered down the street as if shot from a cannon. 
Others joined in, and in a twinkle the city was 
convulsed with dashing steeds and rattling vehi- 
cles, which, as they collided, knocked each other 
into scatteration. The street was crowded and the 
fright destructive. Some were mortally injured, 
among whom was the philosopher, who was im- 
paled on a wagon-tongue and carried two blocks 
before his body was recovered. He died with a 
hide fall of vengeance for Winebruiser, whose only 
offense was innocently writing him of his parentis 
folly. 

It was a ghastly spectacle. In the excitement 
Dora and I were trampled upon the sidewalk, but 
she was soon taken home and I was carried into a 
drug-store, where a doctor probed my wound, and 
where I expected to go the way of most of his 
patients. 

The following verses partly describe my feelings 
then : 

This earthen cell is damp and chill, 

And clanking links of fettered will 

Reverberate unto my ear 

The farewell of departing eheer. 

Attuned to doleful notes of woe, 

And melancholy’s grating bow. 

Again upon the darksome air 
Sound only echoes of despair. 


78 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEE. 


The minstrelsy of other times 
Unto my ear discordant chimes, 

And sunny scenes of other days 
Resemble now a hazy maze. 

To man and time a silly toy. 

My sustenance is fading joy; 

And through its crumbs I sadly scan 
The prodigality of man. 

As I survey the misty yeirs 
That sprinkled smiles and showered tears, 
I find that o’er life’s rugged hill 
My idols here wrought greatest ill. 

Despair enchained and ever warred, 

I’m sepulchered above the sward. 

While visitants of weirdest gloom 
Are pilgrims to my living tomb ! 


In the havoc a peanut-vendor’s oven was knocked 
into an oil-house, which quickly took fire and il- 
luminated the surroundings with the fire-fiend’s 
lurid glare. Soon the cry of fire resounded among 
the multitude, while the bells rang and frantic mor- 
tals sped to and fro in consternation. The fiames 
quickly spread, and it seemed beyond human effort 
to extinguish them. Piercing cries and lamenta- 
tions rent the air, while fioating spray, nearing 
voices, falling timbers and extreme heat indicated 
the fire’s extension and proximity to me, writhing 
in agonizing terror where the occupants had left 
me helpless in the fiames. I would die anyway, 
and my incineration would save funeral expenses^ 

Heedless of my presence or helplessness, eager 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


79 


pillagers scrambled over me and were ransacking^ 
the store for valuables, when the proprietor ven- 
tured in with the flames and remonstrated, but he 
was stabbed by one of the villains, and fell life- 
less upon me. I was unable to move, and hi& 
blood trickled over me until I was as bloody as a 
whipped cockney. 

His watch and money were taken by the ruffians^ 
but their egress was barred by flames of fire, and 
they perished in the passage. None dared to enter^ 
and the flaming walls glared grimly on the corpse 
and me. 

Within that flery furnace I resembled a drunken 
Irishman who was placed under an anvil in a 
blacksmith shop, and awakened in the morning by 
the scintillations of heated iron, and imagined he 
was in Satanic regions, said : 

“ Mr. Divil, be aisy an^ forgive me this toime ; I 
was drunk whin I was put in here.’^ 

I, too, was helpless when put there, and though 
I implored assistance the flames rolled on, a heavy 
timber fell beside me, and all was darkness. 

On regaining consciousness I found myself be- 
side the cadaver, in a cellar. The timber had 
mashed down the cellar-door and saved me from 
the flames — bare luck in misfortune. 

The fire had been extinguished, and men were 
leaning over me, marveling at my escape. 


so 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


As they raised the body and me to the surface, a 
wail of anguish arose from the widow and orphans 
of the murdered man that was pitiful and heart- 
rending. Had the murderer, whose charred body 
lay on the pavement, heard their lamentations be- 
fore the cruel deed, his arm would have paralyzed 
and his blood congealed in its meditation. Truly 
man is more impulsive than reflective, and does in 
a second what he can never undo. 

None seemed to grieve for Winebruiser, and I 
rejoiced that they did not, for I wished to sorrow 
alone. But even that consolation was denied me, 
for Dora soon entered and had me conveyed to her 
home, where her kind and tender nursing soon 
hastened my convalescence. On my recovery her 
parents were eager to know the cause of my trou- 
ble with the philosopher, who had declined to in- 
form them. I dared not tell the truth, neither 
could I lie to them. I was non-plussed, and re- 
sembled a man against whom another held a note. 
When pressed to pay the principal or interest, he 
replied that it was against his interest to pay the 
principal and against his principle to pay the in- 
terest. 

But I resolved the extremes into a mean, and 
prevaricated. I told them that he had been my 
old friend and adviser; that our friendship had 
been the warmest, but that our correspondence 


TIMOTHY WINEBKUISER. 


81 


had so inflamed it that when we met it ignited and 
fired his heart against me. Hence the conflagra- 
tion. 

That sufiiced. I was again received into the 
family in full fellowship — a fact convincing me 
that — 

O’er credulous are some, 

Too unbelieving many; 

While others in the hum 
Harken not to any. 


F 


OHAPTEE XI. 


I was soon reinstated in the store, and after sev 
eral months I resolved to consummate my wedding* 
with Dora, whose heaving sighs, slumbery eyes 
and love posturing implied a longing for her 
maiden sacrifice. 

Apprising her parents of our desire to complete 
what had been sadly frustrated, they consented to 
the combination, provided we didn^t get up a cor- 
ner on population. 

Grand preparations were made for the bridal 
festivity, pending which I felt like a wandering 
philanthropist in quest of some object over which 
my good nature might expend itself. I deemed 
myself the fondling of fortune and the essence of 
benevolence, and would not have exchanged con- 
ditions with the richest autocrat, whose insignifi- 
cance I even pitied. Truly, the contemplation of 
wedlock is a sublime spectacle, and the sublirnest 
and holiest of earthly fruition. 

Marriage is a boon of love, 

And heaven’s promotion here; 

And bi-eathes an odor of above, 

The incense of His sphere. 

Time finally freighted us the happy day, and 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


83 


with it the most conglomerated mass of humanity 
that ever aggregated by the vagary of circum- 
stances. From waxing youth to frigid age, from 
the unsophisticated lad to the retired sinner — all 
arrayed before us in strange panorama. 

Amidst that unhomogeneous gathering we were 
annexed, or, figuratively speaking, reduced to com- 
mon denominators and added, totalling one. Dur- 
ing and shortly after the metamoriihose my feel- 
ings were indesc^bable. I was a nervous, thought- 
less and restless entity, a trifling fraction from a 
fool. My bride observed my strange aberration 
and escorted me aside, where soon “ Richard was 
himself again. 

We retired at night to a gorgeously draped 
chamber and sensuously scented couch, most rav- 
ishing to my senses. Everything was fragrant with 
a joy-distilling redolence, and suggestive of a 
voluptuary’s paradise, while the apartment seemed 
to be especially furnished by Gupid for a carnival 
■of love. 

Surveying the scene of festive luxury. Wine- 
bruiser, an insignificant mortal, chambered with a 
gushing and mellow maiden as bright and beauti- 
ful as a cluster of sunbeams, I could not but feel 
the incongruity of the arrangement and the strange 
inating of Providence. 

While my bride was arranging or disarranging 


84 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


herself I coiled myself around a leg of the bed- 
stead and sat listening to the coachman sing the- 
following in the next room : 

FROZEN TEARS. 

One wintry ev’mng-, long ago, 

As softly fell the \irgin snow, 

We saddened as between us fell 

The soul-distressing word, “Farewell!” 

As stepped we ’part with chilling air. 

Her tears congealed to crystals rai e, 

Which dangled from her e; elids bright, 

Like brilliants, to enlight the sight. 

But in a twinkle glowed her eyes 
With fervency and gl id surprise. 

And thawed the beads of frozen life. 

As said I, “Kate, I’m short a wife.” 

Just then paterfamilias shouted at the door that 
his spouse was writhing in cramps, and that I 
should instantly run^for a physician. With the 
most reluctant reluctance of my life I arose and 
did so, but not with the minutest particle of intinfr 
tesimal pity for my wife’s mother. 

M. D.’s were scarce that night, so I had to re- 
sort to our minister, who suffixed his name with 
D. D. — damnation delayed. He was in the pulpit, 
struggling with a sermon on hades, and I dared 
not approach him, lest I might be “tired out.” Ex- 
pecting that his sulphurous discourse would soon 
flicker, I took a seat before him, but he glimmered- 

,/ 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 85 

away for hours, to my utter discomfort. He would 
not quench. 

Some of the congregation fell to napping, and an 
ancient relic behind me even snored — an impropri- 
ety I heartily approved as pertinent to the time. 
He took the unconsciously given hint and shut off 
the gas — his own first. As I told him my errand, 
and that I had lingered there for two hours, he 
seized his hat and cane and hurried away. Being 
unable to keep pace with his lordly strides, I was 
forced to trudge homeward alone. 

Midway home I was assailed by a former rival, 
who erected a phrenological development under 
my left optic, and was engaged in a general deco- 
ration of my facial front, when we fell against a 
policeman, and laid in jail until morning. 

We were arraigned before a Mayor, whose pom- 
pous air and assumed dignity would abash a pea- 
cock and amuse an undertaker. In admiration of 
my assailant’s handicraft he reduced his finance 
ten dollars and retired him from the public gaze 
for thirty days. He released me, but intimated 
that my protession of innocence was as doubtful 
as the result of a mule race or the verdict of a 
petit jury. With these compliments I sneaked 
home, bewailing my late transition from glory to 
humiliation. 

My virgin wife met me at the gate, and was de- 


86 


TIMOTHY WINEBHUISER. 


lirions over my absence. With tears tricklingr 
down her ruddy cheeks, she told me that her 
mother’s illness was such as to indicate my loss of 
the luxury of a mother-in-law, and led me into the 
sick-room, where our mutual mother was quite 
knotified — i. e., she was tied up in cramps and 
would not tolerate the minister nor his prescrip- 
tions. 

Having read in an almanac or somewhere else 
that friction was good for muscular spasms, I sug- 
gesfed its trial, which was approved by the H. D., 
when her husband commenced rubbing the af- 
fected parts, but his effort was so indifferent that 
he might equally have attempted to bail the ocean. 

They finally requested me to perform the deli- 
cate task, which I did, apd rubbed, panted and 
perspired over her old bones until I must have 
scraped off' hide enough to make a bellows. The 
attrition was a brilliant success, and her aged 
frame was soon rejuvenated, to the apparent dis- 
gust of her husband, who, after my Esculapian ef- 
fort, unceremoniously left the apartment, followed 
by the theologist. 

The fact soon crept into my cranium that my 
wife’s mother and father were peculiarly es- 
tranged. He assumed control of the household,, 
while she presumed to wear the breeches ; but she 
was so big-headed and her feet were so large that 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


87 


she could not get them on, hence a breach be- 
tween them. 

They made me their chafing dish, into which 
they emptied their family coals, which were sear- 
ing to my senses, and would have incinerated me 
had I not occasionally “blown off^’ and exchanged 
them as they came. I learned from the coal-heav- 
ers that happiness too seldom f^^athers the marriage 
couch, as it is softened with love, truth and virtue, 
with which they were unfortunately not surfeited. 

Although they liked one another, they seemed 
to blame themselves because they did. Alas ! that 
man — 

Bai-ters sweet for noxious pelf, 

And fans the flame which sears himself. 

As I noted their antics, they raked the following 
from my brain : 

Wanton monarch, why constrain 
Woman to love a thing- inane; 

For despite your devious ways 
She reveres you all her days? 

Luring woman, why constrain 
Man to love the fount of pain; 

For with all thy subtle guile 
He adores thee all the while? 

Fickle pair, why mystify 
The intellect of every sky 
With mysteries we magnify? 

To all an echo answers, why? 

My wife championed her father and I her mother ; 


/ 


88 TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 

but mediation seemed futile, and separation was 
threatened. Finally, to felicitate their infelicity, I 
wrote each an anonymous note charging the other 
with every conceivable weakness, and defamed 
them from Alpha to Omega. 

The strategy succeeded, and they became recon- 
ciled, as they hated the miscreant who had vili- 
fied (?) them. A wife and husband may lock ears, 
but gored is he who interferes. 

In the meantime Dora and I enjoyed ourselves 
as deliciously as King and Queen bees in a comb 
of honey. 

After several months of marital industry, the 
prospect of a new discovery in the orbit of Wine- 
bruiser was sunshine to our social system. Tid- 
ings of the stranger were wafted on the breeze of 
gossip, and soon returned with the intelligence 
that Winebruiser had a pair of twins! But a cen- 
sus of the family showed I had them — to get. 

Later, however, a little kicker arrived, and com- 
menced kicking before he said a word. On his ar- 
rival I didn’t love him much, but just respected 
him for his daddy’s sake. 

He was peevish and noisy, and deprived me of 
many night’s sleep ; but to his mother his screams 
were whispers supernal, for divinely musical are 
the cries of a first-born to a fond mother’s ears. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


89 


He was a huge fellow, and the connecting link of 
the household; but his nightly doings almost made 
me regret my contribution to the census. Below 
is a sample of many night’s experience : 

“Timothy,” — she usually called me that — “do 
have everything in its place to-night, for our dar- 
ling is unwell, and hand me that square piece of 
cloth upon which you are standing. Oh, how 
.stupid you are sometimes!” 

I did so, and laid down, but was soon nudged by 
her, saying: 

“Your snoring and tossing disturbs the baby, 

. and you have just thrust your finger into his pre- 
cious nose; so, for goodness sake push over and 
be still — and remember his nose is no finger-ring, 
nor this room a whistling school.” 

I arose and went to sleep upon the sofa, but as 1 
was in the midst of a delightful dream I was 
aroused by the words : 

“ Mr. Winebruiser, pass me the soothing-syrup, 
and catnip-tea, and paregoric, and a spoon, and 
throw back those blinds, and open the window, 
and bring me a cloth, and light the lamp, for Ido 
believe the baby is dying. Dear me, you walk so 
,slow that if you were in a corn-field your shadow 
would kill the corn, and a corpse could almost 
tread on you.” 

Feeling that if I would have the egg I should 


90 


TIMOTHY WINERUISER. 


bear with the hen cackling, I began groping for a 
match, when my shins collided with the ragged 
edge of a casket for the marriage sequence. 
Under other circumstances I would have fainted, 
but my respect for young Winebruiser was sooth- 
ing to my agony. I stepped around like a lamp- 
lighter, but in doing so upset the centre-table and 
broke the lamp and sundry bottles of doubtful and 
miscellaneous contents, necessitating a midnight in-- 
trusion on a neighbor to borrow a lamp. 

I complied with the many injunctions, and finally 
laid down, hoping to be not again disturbed ; but 
rest was not my portion, as I was soon awakened 
by my persistent wife, who said : 

“Timothy, how can you snore and slumber while 
our darling is harrowed with the colic, and croup, . 
and phthisic, and spasms, and everything? Hasten 
for a doctor, and bestir yourself, for you move like 
a Stoic drifting on the pool of indifference.’^ 

I knew a physician was unnecessary, but I was 
forced to procure one, who prescribed some bread 
pills and flour powders and departed. After car- 
rying him crying around the room — the family cir- 
cle — and having my shins barked with sundry arti- 
cles of furniture, he finally quieted about morning. . 
Such is no exaggeration of my baby troubles. 

Naming him was the next difficulty. We ran- 
sacked mythology and literature, ancient, modern, . 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


91 


sacred and profane, and failed to select an appella- 
tion for our mucli boy. Our parents were con- 
sulted, but they, too, were confounded. Names of 
iny liking were objectionable, and vice versa. For 
instance, she suggested Moses, but I objected be- 
cause of his racket with the Phillistines. I recom- 
mended Solomon, but she scouted the idea of 
naming her child after a voluptuary. The name- 
sake of her child should be as vestal as a seraph^s 
dream. We searched from Moses to George 
Francis Train, but found no faultless patronymic. 
Even Timothy was suggested ; but, like the rest, 
he had no more show than a stray chicken in a 
darkey neighborhood. 

Finally, one evening, as I tried to scratch out of 
my head a few bright thoughts into this dark and 
gloomy world, my wife drawled out : 

“ Timothy, what other name do you suggest for 
our jewel?” 

“ Dam-ifi-know,” I responded, in a yawn. 

‘‘ Why, Tim, what a horrid, sulphurous and dis- 
cordant term.” 

I replied that accenting it on the pre-ante-penult 
and terminating its first syllable at “a” would eu- 
phonize and convert it into a unique appellation- 
Strangely she thought so, too, and our marriage 
twig was denominated Da-mif-i-know Winebruiser.. 


92 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


My wife soon divided lier affections between the 
baby and me, but I could not object, knowing that 
perfect womanhood comes only with motherhood, 
and that, however much a mother may divide her 
love, she can never receive here an adequate re- 
turn. A mother’s heart is the key-stone of the 
family arch, and the holiest and most exquisite of 
nature’s workmanship. 

Unlike a wagon, however, she could not hold her 
tongue — still our relations were of the usual sort, 
seldom intense and often adjourned. 


CHAPTER XII. 


The “dear people’’ were having their hands 
shaken off by importunate candidates for munici- 
pal and state honors, when my wife’s father, who 
was an effete politician and a belly-brained states- 
man, said to me one day : 

“ Winebruiser, are you familiar with politics ?” 

“ Xot with Polly Tics,” I answered; “but I am 
with Ann Tics.” 

“You are, ha!” exclaimed my wife, pulling my 
ear out as long as a sailor’s yarn. 

I excused my obtuseness by saying I was ab- 
sorbingly absorbed in cogitatingly cogitating on 
my own cogitation over a characteristic character 
of my book. 

She sarcastically replied that thenceforth I should 
not be so bewilderingly bewildered in creating a 
creature of my creation. 

Her father insinuated that they were politically 
and antically similar; that I was the choice of his 
club ; that, like a lamp-post, I had no record to as- 
sail ; that I was not — 

A demagogue who everywhere 
Illuminates with vocal glare 
The liberty he would impair, 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


And that, though my surface indicated little, still — 

An humble mantle oft enfolds 
. A treasury of many golds. 

Dug out of nature’s holy mine 
And coined in honor’s mint divine. 

“ Politics,” said he, “ is a subtle flirt, whose lov- 
ers are mostly mugwumps, who, if stripped in the 
sunlight, would scarce leave a shadow. In court- 
ing her, be like a dingy demijohn — too cumbersome 
to shake and too opaque to see your contents. 
Lean a little toward everything, and be pronounced 
in nothing. Decide not for friendly factions, for 
one would turn your enemy. Study the popular 
current and sail thereon. In short, be what you 
:ure not, and like me — 

“ A craft that seldom navigates 
Candor’s clear and narrow straits. 

But cruises ’round in wily sport, 

And carries flags of every port.” 

I evinced a desire not to drift into the turbid 
waters of state, to toss, flounder and finally swamp, 
when he continued: 

“As you seem to be good for nothing else, you 
might make a politician. Set sail and I will pilot, 
light-house and harbor you in the storm. You 
have all the requisites — abundant presumption, the 
brass of a cannon, a crafty and voluble tongue, 
:and an inwardness as latent as -the force in a 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


95 


mule’s liiud-leg. Not always the worthy are given 
places, nor the amateur that most disgraces. 

My wife interjected that I was too unsophisti- 
cated for this world, when he continued : 

‘‘ Mingle in the struggle, for unemployed genius 
is a crime ; and remember that men are gamesters 
in the pack of life — this game of euchre, with 
gouge often trumps, which few pass and many take 
up, where kings and queens come under knaves, 
where a good card is often turned down and a bad 
one made, where spotted hands are played and 
tricks count for game, and where a few, very few, 
play with honor, win with modesty and lose with 
silence, and are ordered up by the Great Dealer as 
turns the inevitable spade. Some come out ahead 
and others drift into oblivious exile on a crafty sea, 
viewed by these lines,” handing me the following 
verses : 

LIFE’S CRAFTY SEA. 

Drifting on the rippling surge 
That typifies a mystic verge, 

We spy along its vague profile 
Tinselled crafts submerging, while 
Ruder ones pursue their way 
Regardless of the dashing spray. 

Cruising on the turgid main 
Where many seek the port of gain. 

Vessels rigged and amply crewed 
Within the calm are often viewed. 

While others flounder in the squall. 

Bereft of compass, crew and all. 


9G 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Gazing- on the bubbly sti’eam 
That terminates this hazy dream; 

How cruiser g-reat and tiny smack 
Oft ag-ainst the billows tack ; 

How multiplied the passing gales, 

Guilely stemmed by shifting sails. 

I made no reply, but in the next issue of the 
Eoaring Belcher was the following : 


Honorahle Timothij Winebruiser, Esg. : 

AVe, the custodians of the glorious fabric of universal freedom, ac- 
tuated by an ardent solicitude for suffering humanity, and conscious 
of the transcending penetration of your mentality, piously request 
that you become a candidate for the Legislature, that we.may colo- 
nize the fertile pi’ovince of mutuality, and that political quacks may 
soon bewail along sinuosity’s sinuous trail. 

Humanitarian, heed our call, for the bosom of liberty’s fairy god- 
dess heaves with tempestuous emotion, awaiting to escort you under 
the triumphal arch of universal emancipaGon. 

Hoping in you to wield our sceptre and our shield, we pensively 
subscribe ourselves. 


Yours, with solicitous solicitation. 


Q. Riosity, 
U. R, Left, 
Ed. U. Cate, 

N. Dow, 

O. Pshaw, 
K. Price, 


Dick Tator, 
N. O. Good, 
Ben. E. Dict, 
B. Ware, 

D. Camp, 

U. Know, 


Aud one more. 


Under it was a double-leaded editorial puffing 
me on the number and character of my petitioners. 

A flame of political ardor animated me as I read 
those mental despumations. I imagined, vain mor- 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


97 


tal, tliat of intellectual intellectuality I was all of 
it, and that humanity’s destiny simmered in my 
bosom. Strange how we are attracted by the 
glimmer of expectant success and betrayed into 
the snare of worldly promotion, while reason 
passes us as if we occupied no space in its 
sight. 

Their boshy vaporings turned me from the 
shaven field of civil into the thorny one of pub- 
lic life. Candidates for the various offices were as 
numerous as ticks on a bullock, and when two or 
three voters met together a politician was in the 
midst of them. 

I had two competitors, one a plastic and unso- 
phisticated plebian and the other a grim-visaged, 
box-ankled, frail-jointed, ill-missioned, satan-tempt- 
ed, blear-eyed, gloom-laded, chicken-breasted, joy- 
faded, pig-headed, virus-tongued, ape-featured and 
threadbare politician. Neither had the sense of a 
fool’s daddy. To do good we must do some harm, 
but the rustic was so harmless that he would scarce 
strike a match, and so aberrant that he once 
scratched my back for his own. In fact, he was 
such an itchy candidate that most of the voters 
scratched him on election day. His comrade, the 
political fossil, was familiar with every strata of 
human action, and hugged every measure that 
seemed popular with the masses. He resembled 


98 


TIMOTHY WINERUISER. 


the old hag who, in crossing a stream, on a plank, 
and fearing it would break, exclaimed, — 

“ God is good, and the devil isn^t bad.^^ 

The district was sparsely populated, so we can- 
vassed it collectively. Our partisans were fairly 
divided, and numerous were the discussions on 
the relative merits of Winebruiser, Knowlittle and 
Takeall. 

Haranguing the suffragans, we promised them 
everything — almost our corpses — and lied about 
one another with such li(e)ability that it was feared 
we would put each other in the hands of an under- 
taker — an undertaking we feared to undertake, as 
they were cowards, and I was glad of it. 

Our speeches were garbled and revamped to suit 
the exigencies of gossip and the ends of cunning 
and fawning votaries. All seemed fair in politics, 
as in love and war. In our rounds a correspond- 
ent, signed “ Ann Tagonism,^’ described one of our 
intellectual tilts as follows : 

“ A mysterious and miscellaneous aggregation of 
hand-shaking philanthropists, with a ‘ flow of rea- 
son and a feast of soul,’ stupefied Kickapoo lately 
They knew and loved everybody, and seemed to 
yearn for something over which their good natures 
might weep. Briefly, they appeared to have issued 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


99 


from the matrix of human devotion for the salva- 
tion of humanity. 

“ Mr. Knowlittle opened the discussion, and 
would have dropped into his boots with trepi- 
dation but for the bracing influence of Barley 
Corn. To state that his cognomen mirrors his 
knowledge would be no distortion of veracity; 
excepting, perhaps, his information of the noisome 
putrefaction of his opponents, whom he abhors as 
the slimy vipers of slimedom, and who can’t speak 
the truth in the easiest language spoken.” 

Eeferring to Winebruiser, he said : 

“The miserable worm burrows too low for 
notice, and is too trifling to tread on, yet is viewed 
as one of those evil-dyed creatures whom frailty 
has modeled and error created for the invasion of 
.our liberties. Mildly, he is a dread monstrosity, 
teeming with the ebullition of political rancour, 
whose frothing is as ridiculous as his fatuity is no- 
torious, and who exceeds in cheek the grasshop- 
per, Avhich, after eating a farmer’s tobacco crop, 
<even asked him for the chew he had in his mouth. 

“ Satan smiled at his inception and nature wept 
at his development; mind withers at his breath, 
and matter crumbles at his touch; the virus of the 
.spheres rankle in his caress ; pestilence precedes 
him, and devastation follows in his wake ; a similar 
Jump of infection never corrupted humanity ; man 


100 


TIMOTHX WINEBRUISER. 


cowers under liis scorpion lashes as at the beck of 
fate, the wreck of matter or universal chaos ; re- 
mote planets feel his influence, terrific and ap- 
palling, and even the man in the moon has peri^ 
odic convulsions when passing him. Surely he is 
odious.’^ 

(Here a rencounter between the speaker and 
Colonel Winebruiser was barely prevented.) 

“ Hon. Takeall followed, and insinuated in harsh 
periods that his opponents had emerged from the 
cess-pool of iniquity to infect the moral atmos- 
phere, and would be now in prison had they been 
rogues enough ; while vestal he was a disinfectant 
for their malignancy. He blubbered away for a 
few minutes, and impressed the audience with 
everything but his candor, so I drop him like con- 
tagion, while he and his frothing drift down obliv- 
ion on the bubbles of bosh. 

“Colonel Winebruiser, the left-handed states- 
man, next bobbed up like a prairie-dog from his 
hole, and pompously began spitting a few words at 
the crowd. If Winebruiser would shave and bathe 
a few times there would not be much left of him. 
He is one of those windy creatures that proves 
‘ language was given man to disguise his thoughts.^ 
Unmindful that blather is not brains, he brayed for 
hours, pouring out his drivel on a crowd waiting 
for him to bite his tongue and poison himself. His 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


101 


«kull-crusliing periods fairly rattled on the roofs of 
our craniums, but the meeting adjourned to wit- 
ness a dog fight.’’ 

Though hurt in feeling, I half liked the writer’s 
notice of me, as aspirants generally dislike the 
silent contempt business. It stimulated my exer- 
tions and induced me to assume more genial socia- 
bility, as quarantined are the frigid and exclusive. 

Two papers were published in the town, one 
Democratic and the other Eepublican — the last 
named pressed my cause through some pressure 
of my wife’s father. 

We closed the canvass in a religious community. 
Being desirous of receiving its suffrage, I inter- 
spersed my speech with numerous quotations from 
the Bible, and assumed a sanctimonious outward- 
ness generally. Commenting on it, my organ 
wound up a flaming editorial as follows : 

‘‘His grandiloquent effort glittered with the 
rarest originality, and swayed and electrified his 
auditors as if entranced by the mellifluously-toned 
notes of Orpheus. Such cloud-sweeping elo- 
quence never illuminated political skies.” 

The Democratic editor only gave it a paragraph, 
as follows : 

“Winebruiser said a say yesterday, and spoke 
the little he had in his little head to a small boy, a 


102 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEK. 


Chinaman and ourselves. Although extremely fat- 
uous, it is doubtless a plagiarism, for it seems we 
have seen or heard it before, somewhere.’^ 

That Democratic editor is probably yet in the 
dark. His animadversions of me continued until, 
through some arrangement between him and my 
father-in-law, a week before election, when he 
flopped over and championed my cause with ex- 
ceeding zeal. I was in consequence elected, but 
so barely that Takeall contested my election^ 
Pending the contest, partisan ardor waxed warmly 
among our respective friends and hirelings ; time- 
servers, temporizers, ambidexters, trimmers and 
other sycophantic workers, were manipulated like 
the “ titular dignitaries of a chess-board.’^ 

Even the independents caught the infection, and 
some of the more ultra became actually rampant, 
leading a German barkeeper to remark : 

“Dem peoples is crazy. This mornin’ a feller 
comes in und preaks two chairs, un say dot Take- 
all is fleeted. Den anoder bummer runs in an’ 
mashes the table und say dot Vinbooser is fleeted. 
Pooty soon anoder loafer schumps in und preaks 
his fist mit der counter down, und dances mit his 
hind feet behind his legs an’ says nopody is fleeted. 
I pelieves it mineself.” 

After the conflict, various conjectures were of- 
fered and exploded over the cause of the defeat of 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER, 


103 


the numerous candidates, who had been lured into 
expectant triumph by designing men and their own 
ambition. 

Strang-e it is, though long disclosed, 

By only man is man opposed; 

And nature in her culture gives 

To him a fruit that dying, lives. 

As a taunt to my opponents, the following ap- 
peared in my favorite organ : 

THE CANDIDATE’S LAMENT. 

I’m pining near the spot 
Where Jackson and LaMott 
Pledged me their suffrage true. 

And said, “ Dear Declamate, 

Your ardent love of state 
Endears mankind to you.” 

“Your wisdom is divine 
And noble in design,” 

Said they in mellow tones. 

Which now as I am left 
And of their votes bereft. 

Resound as mocking groans. 

Now Anderson and Jones, 

(Oh, how I hate their bones!) 

With coldness hasten by. 

Unconscious of the “ smiles ” 

I gave to them and Giles, 

When none seemed good as I. 

My howdy-given grips 
Are ashes on the lips 
Of this decrepit nag; 

And now in sori’ow’s marsh, 

Where every note is harsh, 

I’m left to hold the bag. 


104 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER, 


Though never during life 
Attuned to grating strife, 

Nor illy, darksome deed. 

My failings quickly spread. 

And many even said 
That hempen was my meed . 

My vision failed to scan 
The inwardness of man. 

And frailty in him crammed; 

But if I seek again 
An office-hold from men. 

May declamate be d . 

It struck their hatred, but soon rolled down the 
gloomy canyon of silence. Finally all contention 
and logomachy ceased, and I stalked* off to the 
capitol to legislate for a duped constituency. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

The Legislature was a queer body of imbeciles, 
luediocres and geniuses, multiformed and multi- 
plied, concentrated there by varied and opposing 
interests to weave their mental cobwebs around 
human action and spin a few threads for the weak 
to bind the strong, which held them about as firmly 
as a bold on air. 

Assuming the importance of a country postmas- 
ter at a flag-raising, I entered among them and pre- 
sented my credentials to a fellow with a lead-pen- 
cil over each auricle, as if to balance his head and 
keep his ears from chafing his brains. They con- 
vinced him that a huge chunk of legislative intel- 
lect had struck the Capitol, and he introduced me 
around to various gentlemen from so and so, until 
I was stuffed with the belief that only gentlemen 
got office. 

During the preliminaries I strayed into a bunch 
of supposed statesmen and looked wise. Pres- 
ently a leading spirit approached my desk, and 
said : 

‘‘The brain element have concentrated on the 
brilliant Major Blather for Speaker. How are you 
disposed towards him V’ 


106 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


To be ranked in the “ brain element was a con- 
summation I coveted and a tickling tribute to my 
vanity, so I pledged him my support. 

A man with silver spectacles, crowning a rubi- 
cund nose, next approached me, and said : 

“Your appearance of a Christian induces this 
solicitation of your vote for Parson Bray, the 
pious statesman. The beams of Christianity should 
illuminate our deliberations, and he is our most ef- 
fulgent luminary. Is he honored with your suf- 
frage ? 

I told him he was, when he leveled his impor- 
tunity at an inoffensive member behind me. 

Another law-grinder addressed me in this man- 
ner : 

“ The old members desire your co-operation in 
electing Colonel Pliant to the Speakership. Your 
recompense will be the chairmanship of an im- 
portant committee, before whom lobbyists, etc., 
pay court, and leave more than they bring away, 
when certain acts or measures are recommended 
favoring their interests. To them a few thousand 
dollars alongside a favorably engrossed report are 
as candle-light to the sun. Of course you do not 
compromise yourselt, nor is it your constituents’ 
business how you act in the matter. Yes or no are 
the monosyllables upon which hinge your weal or 
woe in our councils. Upon which do you hinge U’ 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


107 


I swung on the affirmative, and soon the gavel 
fell, and nominations for Speaker were in order. 
Blather, Bray and Pliant were nominated by the 
various factions, and the latter was elected by 
one vote. He knew his strength, and hence his 
friend^s overtures. 

Agreeable to bargain, he dignified the literary 
end of a committee with Winebruiser. 

Presently strange though familiar persons, male 
and female, began to court my friendship and ac- 
quaintance, and importuned my company at sup- 
pers, champagne festivals, and other places. I 
complied as much as my capacity for refreshments 
admitted, and sometimes came home between two 
friends — as I told my landlady, to keep them from 
coming together. I never saw so many rascals, as 
every hour or two some one would say : 

“ LePs go out and take something.’^ 

Some went so far as to take sick — taking some- 
thing. Most of the members seemed to be law- 
yers, as they did a great practice at the bar. 

Glitteringly-dressed men and women urged my 
influence — under the influence — in their various 
schemes and the devilknowswhat, and I began to 
take “ something myself. My purse became 
plethoric and myself rotund. Cause : Taking 
something. 

Drowning a few cares with other law-tinkers one 


108 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


evening, I was introduced to the gentleman from 
Drinkville, who was in spirit a perambulating dem- 
ijohn. He had an illness which yielded only to a 
liberal quantity of the quintessence of antiquated 
rye, taken at intervals in a mild solution of sugar 
and water. Before taking — and he looked the 
■same — he usually said : 

A globe of joy, a world of bliss, 

Inhabit evei*y drop of this. 

Which makes the early often late, 

And many crooked, taken “ straight.” 

He prescribed and took it “ straight ” until he 
couldn’t distinguish a goat from a snow-bank. He 
■seemed to say : 

The more I drink 
The more I think 
That of the earth 
I am the King. 

Excusing his continual inebriety, he said that 
years before two sportsmen wagered a quart of 
whisky on a horse-race, and made him stakeholder, 
but that before its result a committee waited on 
them and elevated them to the distinguished emi- 
nence of kicking at America from the end of a 
rope ; and that, faithful to his trust, he had since 
carried the stakes. 

Choice viands gurgled down the openings in our 
faces, until inebriety throttled dignity and reserva- 
tion, and cast them in the corner. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


109 


We were a cosmopolitan set, composed of a 
German, a Frenchman, an Italian, an Englishman,, 
an Irishman, and an American, each displaying the 
peculiar characteristics of his countrymen under 
intoxicants. Our doings may be imagined when it 
is known that when intoxicated a German wants to 
sing, a Frenchman to dance, an Italian to love, an 
Englishman to eat, an Irishman to fight, and an 
American to make a speech. I made no speech,, 
but had a Ban quo-like desire to foight,’^ while the 
droll antics of the others would amuse a Coroner 
or a dying cynic. 

Upon a sofa stood the American, in muddy boots,, 
making frantic efforts to fiy into patriotism on the 
wings of his favorite bird. Said he : 

“ I^m the right wing of my country's eagle, and 
no quill from his caudal regions dare pluck a pinion 
from him to spread the opinion of others. The 
proud fowl that hovered over Crossington washing 
the Delaware, and the Bossachusetts women mak- 
ing tea of the ocean, is an opinionated character, 
and the brag cock of America, under whose wings 
great men have died — and I donT feel well myself; 
but when I do demise, wrap me in a postage-stamp 
of my country, that when time chants his last dirge 
over expiring nature I may 

Here he was struck in the mouth with a glass of 


110 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEE. 


sherry, and the rest of his drivel was lost to the 
world. 

I have purposely omitted to mention Mr. Craft, 
our entertainer, who throughout the wassail 
laughed when we did, drank (not) when we drank, 
and was seemingly amused at our whimsicalities. 
But there was method in his manner and motive in 
his kindness; for when the sensational had del- 
uged our wits, he disclosed his desire for an appro- 
priation to a certain railroad. Five thousand dol- 
lars would be paid us — one thousand each. . Whew ! 
What a prize for a few crumbs of honor. 

Money is a luring friend and a charming foe to 
this “ muddy vesture of decay and too often 
shatters the scruples of mankind. A quintette of 
legislators staggered home that night, well freight- 
ed with the “ needful and poor champagne. 

A cloud of indistinctness darkened my mental 
horizon, and I remembered no more until morning, 
when I found myself in bed with a — chemise ; but 
it enfolded the most gushingly beautiful and rap- 
turously entrancing woman I ever beheld. Any 
other virtuous man would have instantly de- 
camped, but I didn^t — she was my wife. 

Sensitive of my condition and a rum-odored 
breath, I averted my face, which she said was use- 
less, as I smelled clear through. 

After a little tongue-punishment, she served me 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEE. 


Ill 


an inviting meal, which only a wife can, even for a 
bad husband. After eating none of it, I started to 
the morning session, to twist a few ideas into a 
rope to hang malefactors, so to speak. 

Burning with a few flames of the night previous, 
I stepped inside a marble-front for an extinguisher. 
The liquid chemist had just compounded about a 
gill of nose-paint for the pompous American, who 
resolved himself outside of it at one end of the 
bar, while I ordered the same at the other. It was 
a study to see us at both ends of the counter, each 
endeavoring to “take something unobserved by 
the other. 

As we stepped out with a we-never-drink-as-we- 
pass-by appearance, the dispenser of dad-killer 
vocalized as follows : 

They wear their jaws in passing laws, 

Those chaps of legislation; 

But seldom pass a foamy glass— 

’Tis not their inclination. 

Arriving at the assembly, I found that the roll 
had been called and I, marked absent. I leaned 
my nervous self on that ever-ready helper, an ex- 
<}use, which kindly supported me, as a number of 
themselves had often been tardy through lingering 
before large mirrors and bending their elbows be- 
fore taking a few cloves. They knew that people 
in glass houses should not throw stones — in other 


112 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


words, that dwellers in crystal palaces should re- 
fraiii from the propulsion of irregularly-shaped par- 
ticles of granite formation. 

Oraft^s railroad appropriation bill was up for 
passage, but met strong opposition from a few 
kickers whose tongues were not oiled by the 
glossy lubricator which runs the machinery of 
power. There was no mutual back-scratching 
with them, no trampling upon the many for the 
benefit of the few, but they wished to go straight 
forward in doing what appeared to be right, leav- 
ing the consequence to Providence. But an ad- 
journment of conscience was moved, seconded 
and passed by something in the breast of their 
leader, whose position was a disposition of oppo- 
sition, but whose tongue soon balked and tangled 
in silent consent. Some infiuencing infiuence had 
infiuenced him — a little tongue-brake, perhaps. 

Child-like, feed man when hungry and his clamor 
ceases. The bill passed, and all was well — for the 
railroad. True, the press blazed with fiaming 
strictures, and christened us a horde of legisla- 
tive jugglers, fond of money, and all that, but it 
only retired some of us to private life and substi- 
tuted others equally as bad. 

Ours was a modern session, so monopolies and 
class legislation found especial favor, while the 
poor, oppressed toilers, the pillars of the conn- 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEit. 


113 


try^s hope, were further enslaved in money-bag 
thrall dom. 

Money-bags was our host, and we looked on 
poor empty-pockets like tauruses on an illegiti- 
mate calf. Many pockets were full of nothing 
when the following was left by one who had 
tramped through life and rode dead-head to the 
grave : 

AN OUTCAST’S LAMENT. 

A miniou of augmenting woe, 

I contemplate the long ago, 

While eyes suffused and teeming o’ei* 

Adown my cheeks their sorrow pour. 

As memory, ’neath its earthen dome, 

Reflects anew my early home. 

My early home ! How fond the sound. 

When all is gloom and ill around; 

Whei’e none are left to solace ills. 

Which greedy cunning much instills; 

Nor e’en one friendly form to greet 
In-doors or on the crowded street. 

Alas ! O’er some an evil doom 
Unduly gathers to the tomb ; 

While others, through peculiar fate. 

Glide smoothly o’er this transient state ; 

And some, o’er weak to further roam. 

Find shelter in an early home. 

An early home ! How dear the sound. 

When awful famine stalks around; 

When frowning mortals thrust and stare 
At one, their av’rice stripped so bare. 

And left within this dreary wild, 

A thing of sorrow— needy’s child. 


H 


114 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Alas! Ado wn this mystic vale 
The slavish toilers’ sad bewail 
Too often echoes on the breeze, 

While stoic power smiles at ease— 

So naug-ht consoles this wayward loam 
But waiting for an early home. 

As these lines appealed to my sympathy, I could 
not but feel with Bobby, that “ Man’s inhumanity 
to man makes countless thousands mourn.” 

Deserted, poor and friendless, his sore spirit 
took its upward flight from the rude cabin of a 
fallen woman. She, a frail recipient of the world’s 
contumely, was the ministering angel at his bed- 
side, and the solitary attendant at his sepulchre ; 
whose shrivelled hands closed forever the sight- 
less orbs of the world’s discarded, and placed a 
few flowers on the nameless grave, o’er which the 
dews and winds of heaven weep and breathe as 
sadly as if monumented with towering shaft, in- 
scribed with kingly name. 

As in the stillest night 
The listening ear 
May something hear, 

So in the humblest wight 
The searching eye 
Can good espy. 

One evening, as I was scraping my cranium for a 
skull-bursting idea to dazzle the world, a voluble 
and glitteringly-attired female entered the commit- 
tee-room, and said : 

Colonel Winebruiser, I believe ? ” 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


115 


I bowed coldly, for which she reduced me in 
rank, and continued : 

“ Well, Major, I represent a distressed element 
of this evanescing envelope of the soul, and for a 
moment desire your distinguished attention. You 
doubtless encompass the fact. Captain, and have 
at your palate the nauseous truth, judge, that the 
careening ship of state is lamentably over-manned ; 
too much man and not enough woman. Briefly, 
women have rights which men don’t respect ; qual- 
ities which they don’t appreciate, and aspirations 
which they must honor. Understand, ‘Squire ? ” 

I hinted that her language was too leviathan for 
my pigmy understanding, but that she perhaps 
wished to convert pantalets into pantaloons. 

She rubbed her cheek to coax a blush, and con 
tinned : 

“^You anticipate me, but remotely. Conceive, 
Mr. Winebruiser (stroking my whiskers), a scor- 
pion in the fleece of a lamb, invulnerably lodged, 
Btinging its unfortunate benefactor to death, and 
you will but half feel our condition to-day. Man 
is the stinger and we are the stinged, who de- 
mand, expect, and by all the justice unknown to 
you, must have supremacy over this stern op- 
pressor.” 

As she flnished speaking, she had actually lo- 
jcated herself upon my knees, and was hugging me 


116 


TIMOTHY WINEBRIJISER. 


deliglitfully. Her pleasing caresses enraptured 
me, and I was mildly reciprocating them when a 
savage man broke in the door and pointed at me a 
double-barreled shot-gun, which at that instant 
looked like a twin cannon. Yelled he : 

“ You bald-headed son-of-a-Beecher, how dare 
you act in this manner 

Before I could speak he fired, the charge taking 
distressing effect in my coat-tail. Ghagrinned at 
not killing me outright, he seized me with claws of 
steel, and with a leg like a derrick kicked me half 
way to the ceiling. I fell upon the frantic woman 
and a Dutch Constable, when he pummeled and 
mopped me about the fioor until I was within the 
length of a politician's conscience of believing 
that the remnants of my remains wouldn’t justify 
burial. 

An excited crowd quickly rushed in, and I was 
carried off to my room, feeling like the urchin who 
had affected the virginity of the bed linen. 

After a week’s confinement to my room, I dis- 
covered that my wife had sued for a divorce, re- 
port being current that I had been found in 
fiagrante delicto with another man’s wife. 

That was heaping misfortune on injury. Though 
I related to my wife the unfortunate occurrence^, 
from the woman’s first word to my own last agony,. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


117 


«till she was an outraged wife, and I — a monstrous 
husband. She was happy with me, but would be 
intensely happy without me, so a divorce rent our 
happiness, and I was sent out into the world 
stripped of my jewels and weeded out from society 
as a noxious growth. 

Humiliated beyond measure, I sought the man 
who husbanded that woman and, knowing it would 
take but two seconds to fight a duel, challenged 
him to mortal combat. He accepted. Imagine my 
horror when I learned that he was an old duelist 
and fencing-master, and that the shadows of sur- 
rounding trees were shading nine of his victims. 
A frail sapling, I had struck a buzz-saw, which fac- 
ing would be probable death and avoiding would 
be cravenly cowardice. Grim death stared me in 
the face, for I had never squinted over a weapon 
with malicious intent, nor “ monkeyed with the 
trigger of even a toy-pistol. 

Preparations for the slaughter went on all the 
same, and my dread opponent fairly chuckled over 
the prospective acquisition to his graveyard, which 
he contemplated with pride and longed to orna- 
ment with a full-fledged legislator. Many who met 
or passed me pitied my chances and regretted my 
rashness, on learning that I was my adversary's 
next subject for the undertaker, whom he had 
been lately crowding with business. Even the 


118 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


small boy stopped and whistled after me, “ Harky 
from the tomb,” etc. 

Dreading the meeting, I hunted for some one to 
adjourn it, but might as well have looked for hair 
on a billiard-ball, or a bird’s nest upon the roof of 
a bald-headed man. 

hr earing sunset, my dual friends located me ten 
paces from my grim adversary — 

A fellow of sardonic smile. 

Who dryly grinned, yet scorned the while. 

The shadow of an undertaker shaded me as they 
did so. The stiff-disposer was strictly business^ 
and gave each of us his card — he wanted a job. 

Soon the words, “ One, two, three ” were spoken^ 
when the surgeon interrupted us by saying he had 
forgotten his implements, which were not really 
necessary, he said, as one of us would be killed 
outright — and he looked pityingly over at me — but 
as a mere formality he desired them present. 

We lowered our pistols, and a messenger was 
dispatched for surgical instruments. 

Whether the interruption was ominous of good 
or evil, I knew not, but a strange, demoniac feel- 
ing kindled me, and I burned for the fray. But 
night cast her mantle over the throbbing group,, 
and no messenger came. 

Finally, he not coming, and darkness increasing,. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEE. 


119 


we were put in position, wlien were uttered tlie 
ringing words, “ One, two, tliree— fire ! ’’ 

Simultaneously two sliots echoed on the hill- 
side, and I knew not whether I was myself or 
not ; but I was, and as the curling smoke cleared 
on the evening air I saw my enemy stretched upon 
the ground, fatally wounded, and the fidgety sur- 
geon hopping around like a boy stung in the region 
where the old-time pedagogue applied his ferrule 
to stimulate brains. 

Vanquished mortal ! The darkness had dimmed 
his vision, or he had sighted with his mouth, and 
made me a victor in defeat, for his poor blood was 
no satisfaction after all, and brought me only re- 
grets at best. ‘‘ He who tempers the wind to the 
shorn lamb had kindly preserved me for other 
purposes. 

Having made the place red, and wanting no truck 
with the undertaker or other grave fellows, I gal- 
loped away on a pair of legs that were always 
alive to my welfare, and felt that my safety would 
be safer elsewhere. 

So, like grog before a sailor, I soon melted out 
of sight, and my constituents were left leg-islat- 
ively. 


CHAPTER XIV. 

A little misunderstanding between two sections 
of tbe Union was then being misunderstood, and 
next corraled my attention. 

Two fellows, named Abe and Jeff, were standing 
oach other off, and having some trouble about the 
Coon family. Both had friends, and were stirring 
a considerable stir with them. Their factions were 
getting behind muskets and squinting at each 
other along gun-barrels. 

The prevailing industry was pulling triggers and 
digging holes, and the general desire was to hurt 
somebody. I grew dangerous myself. 

Brave men were going to the front, and others 
were going — to stay at home to protect the women 
and children and themselves. 

The protectors denied me protection, but in- 
duced me to protect them and the unprotected by 
l>ermitting the recruiting officer to put down my 
name, that I might put down the war. My re-en- 
forcement, they said, would settle the matter. It 
didn’t. 

They wrapped me in a sort of uniform and con- 
iided me to a drill-master, who took me in charge. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


121 


and also by the ears, and learned me how to kill 
people. 

As a protection to me and destruction to the 
onemy, he gave me a musket which fired by push- 
ing or pulling the trigger, according to the end I 
held when doing the killing. It and I made a dan- 
gerous combination, he said, and the enemy would 
never forgive him for combining us. 

He twisted a belt around me to keep me from 
bursting with valor and to hold my implements of 
death. He hung a canteen on me, and recom- 
mended that it be kept full, lest emptying it might 
fill me. A comrade encouraged its fullness, and, 
emptying it, got fuller than a full moon — joy-ful, as 
it were. 

I drilled awkwardly, and my awkwardness re- 
duced me to the awkward squad, composed of an 
ex-postmaster, a divorced gambler, an amateur 
cow-boy, and a fellow who had run for office and 
was sorry for it. I nearly wore myself to the heel 
trying to keep step with them. 

The Sergeant was a nice bit of a warrior, but 
looked cross-eyed looking at his stripes. He was 
quite repelling, and stood us off, like a bad pay- 
master. I tried to stand in with him, but he 
wouldn’t stand it. I couldn’t understand why. 

After graduating in slaughter, I was loaded onto 
a transport and sent to the front. There I was ex- 


122 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEE. 


pected to kill everyone whose clothes were not 
fashioned after mine — off color, so to speak. 

Why a difference in tailors should cause me to 
shoot a poor devil who, like myself, was trying to 
pick up a quiet living on the battle-field was per- 
haps because in war strangers kill each other and 
in peace acquaintances do. 

A gun had never divided me and a stranger 
monkeying with the trigger ; still I was picked out 
for picket duty, and ordered to pick off all per- 
sons found picking from our side. I felt as brave 
as a cowed husband when his wife is away, and as 
safe as a rich rogue tried by a packed jury. 

We soon found others facing us on a similar 
mission, whose “ pops ” popped at us like cham- 
pagne bottles at a dude wedding. Then I made 
my first great military movement. Like the candi- 
date who sets ^em up twice, I retreated. 

Presently ten or fifteen thousand of them 
charged on us and commenced putting us down 
in the world to keep themselves up. My com- 
pany, fearing the enmity of the enemy, ran like 
bully boys at Bull Eun, while I sought a bold 
stand — behind a tree. But someone shot me in 
the legs, as if to keep them from running away 
with me. 

I fell behind a deceased mule, and intrenched 
there until surrounded by a foeman, who seized 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


123 . 


me and would not let me let Mm go. He pnlled 
me out from among the hybrid, broke my blun- 
derbuss, and was separating myself and watch 
when a cannon-ball came along and took off his 
hat — his head was in it. 

I seized his gun and fired around promiscuously^ 
until one of my stray shots strayed into our own 
ranks and wounded an officer where I couldn’t 
have hit had he been facing me. For this I 
was charged with color-blindness and fired out of 
the army, and both sides were doubtless safer 
thereafter. 

An incident of the battle is described as follows i 

THEIR MEETING. 

Uniformed in blue and gray, 

Two soldiers breathed their lives away, 

Whose bosoms sheathed the other’s steel. 

While battling for their country’s weal. 

One was young, the other old — 

The former brave, the latter bold; 

And tear-like on them tell the dew. 

As beat their hearts’ life’s sad tattoo. 

In mingling blood they gasping lay— 

The youth in blue, the aged in gray ; 

And braver hearts ne’er bosom thrilled, 

Nor bosoms freer heart-blood spilled. 

One from home had early hied. 

And mingled with the “ other side,” 

And guarding where affection dwelt. 

There buckled on a hero’s belt. 


124 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER 


The other armed one sunny morn 
In lovely Dixie, where were born 
The idols of his very life — 

His buried sires, his children, wife. 

A locket ope’d the sobbing boy, 

A treasure grown from childly toy. 

Whereon a mother’s image smiled 
Upon her dying soldier-child. 

Therein, through tears, the man espied 
The features of a lovely bride. 

Who, then a wife, would shortly be 
A lonely widow by the sea. 

Entering in a last embrace. 

The dying did their kindred trace; 

And sadlj^ thus at closing day, 

Bi*ave son and father passed away. 

They were buried as they died — in each other’s 
arms; and the scarred veterans who laid them 
away shed tears alike on the Blue and the Gray, 
and questioned not their devotions to the causes 
for which their bones now crumble in a lone grave 
in the wilderness ! 


CHAPTER XV. 


Shades of the present, however long cast, 

Partially brighten by gleams of the past. 

Yet fond recollection illumined me not as I 
drifted about like a leaf on the breeze, and snatched 
from retrospection the following verses : 

MEMORY’S FLIGHT. 

As time overburdens the spirit within. 

And weakens the cords of this bundle of sin. 

O’er roses and thistles to far-away years 
Memory traverses, often in tears. 

Gliding aback on its frictionless train. 

Which carries the pilgrim to childhood again. 

How miss we companions who fell on the road. 

Who lightened our burden when heavy the load. 

It traces, now trackless, the pathway of yore. 

Which winded to school from the old cottage door. 

And mirrors the smiles of the old pedagogue. 

Who vanished the mist of the mind’s early fog. 

It pictures the homestead deserted and bare. 

Where infancy sheltered from sorrow and care. 

And misses the voices no weariness drowned. 

While making its portals with music resound. 

Though searching afar for velvety ground. 

It finds to the cradle that briers abound ; 

And sees in its coming from childhood to age. 

That sorrow increases on life’s blotted page. 


I baited one evening at a small bouse and re* 


126 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


quested lodging for the night. The house-wife, a 
sylph-like beauty, sat pensively near a window and 
appeared lost in the mazes of a day-dream. Ko re- 
sults of wedlock romped about to disturb her, 
and she was alone in her reverie. My footsteps 
aroused her, when she bade me enter and await her 
husband, who would shortly appear, though she 
told me that they had but one bed in a room that 
just fitted the house. The watch-dog having some 
feeling over my presence, I threw him a bone to 
conciliate him, and walked in and took a seat 
beside her. 

Her husband, whom twelve men in a dozen would 
call a four-quarters negro, soon entered and said : 

“Well, mister, de night am cold an’ we has but 
one blanket, but I ’predates you misfortune, cause 
I’se camped often under my ’spenders while de 
feller in de moon watch me like I would steal de 
ground I slept on. You kin stay, boss, but I has 
to put you behind wid ourselves.” 

He didn’t put me “ behind,” but I left them be- 
hind and tramped on by moonlight till morning. 

While passing by an uninclosed graveyard that 
uight I read on a headstone the following inscrip- 
fion : 

Gazing mortal strolling past, 

Unto this you’ll come at last ; 

So attend this information : 

Suflf’ring tracks procrastination ; 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


127 


Frost appears when least expected ; 
Christened worth is most rejected ; 
Imagined safety’s Satan’s mask ; 
Humility is Heaven’s task ; 

Tarrying here, survey thyself ; 
Worldly glory’s transient pelf ; 

Flesh to-day ’comes dust to-morrow ; 
Mortals are the urns of sorrow ; 
Mocker time disfigures all ; 

Over greatness comes a pall ; 

Life is but a stified breath ; 

Joy comes not till after death. 


Contemplating a deserted, lonely grave in a 
'dreary wilderness by moonliglit, is a melancholy 
spectacle, rousing gloomy thoughts and dread fore- 
bodings ; longings for a history of the dust within ; 
tidings of one, perhaps, whose opportunity never 
-came, and who was added to the great majority, 
unwept, unhonored and unsung.^’ I hied sorrow- 
fully away. 

I soon fell in with a son of Erin — the laurel- 
twined isle so ignobly oppressed that station comes 
not till at treason’s behest, who accompanied me to 
the next town. 

Entering it we passed through a crowd sur- 
rounding a muscular Yankee, who had just lifted a 
three-year-old steer. Many were marveling at the 
feat, and some vowed that such a lift had never 
been lifted. But the Irishman assured them it had, 
having himself “ hefted ” the animal three years 
-before. They gazed at him as if he was a cross 


128 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


between Tom Pepper and the Mulhatton family. 
Like a fellow with the wrong end of a cigar in his 
mouth, they couldnT see the point. 

Subsequently before a large building, I read the 
following on a placard : 


MONEY ! 

Tremendous Philanthropy ! 

THE POOR MADE MILLIONAIRES ! ! 
And The Rich Richey Richer. 

A FORTUNE to-night. 
HEARKEN ! 

Scientists wonder at it ; statesmen marvel 
at it ; philosophei’S bewilder at it ; cynics 
smile at it ; monarchs envy it ; a halo of 
imperishable glory emblazon it ; the world 
adores it, and gazes with open-mouthed 
wonder at its munificent offering ; while 
abashed nature skulks away, eclipsed by it ! 


A crowd behind crowded me inside, where an- 
other one was crowding a stumpy man oppressing 
a pair of legs, which stuck in him like pegs in a 
milk stool. He extended to midway the knees, 
and was a misfit generally. His nose registered 
jaw-motor enough to paralyze a moonshiner, or 
stagger a Congressman. 

Numerous dollars were dropping and stopping at 
him as he dealt out numbers of tickets, among 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 129 

which, he said, was one sufficiently potent to draw 
a skiill-ful of lucre. 

Occasionally a person would leave a dollar, take 
a ticket and walk out as proud as an old man over 
a new arrival. 

As I was removing a fellow’s hand from my 
pocket, a flesh-clogged woman and two others 
aggregating her in size and cheek, encircled me, as 
if I was the only specimen of the s,enus homo 
extant, and importuned me to take a chance in the 
lottery that night. 

Five thousand dollars was the capital prize, and 
sadly at the mercy of somebody’s dollar. It might 
be mine, they said, and one of them poked me in a 
familiar way, and also in the ribs. 

To escape their importunity I tossed one of 
them my last dollar, pocketed a ticket, and stepped 
out upon the crowded walk, amid a miscellaneous 
crowd of passing mortals — all pursuing the same 
direction. As I was both friendless and money- 
less, it mattered little which direction 1 pursued, 
so I submitted to be pushed along with the living 
throng. 

Presently I was crowded up a stairway and into 
a brilliantly-lighted hall, where a restless and ner- 
vous assemblage awaited something — I knew not 
what, nor had I the breath to inquire, being 
wedged in between a corpulent hag of forty and 
I 


130 


TIMOTHY WINEBHUISER. 


a gouty old codger of fifty. Before me sat a gush- 
ing miss of sixteen, toying with a recreant curl, 
and behind me a restless individual, making inef- 
fectual eftbrts to muzzle a flea that was quietly 
feeding on his back. Like poor me, even fleas 
were victims of human treachery. 

Shortly something began to promenade up the 
broadway of the old lady’s left perambulator, when 
she issued a scream that raised me from my seat 
into the old man’s lap, nearly dislocating his thigh 
and crushing his gastronomical bump generally. 
Disorder reigned in our quarter until a modest 
search discovered the harmless flea, which the 
gentleman at my back, it seemed, had succeeded 
in dislodging. It had sought more congenial terri- 
tory — a legacy, as it were. 

My attention was next drawn to a left-handed 
man who called the numbers of tickets as he drew 
them from a receptacle, while a lady near him 
named their corresponding prizes. At first the 
drawing was exciting, but finally lapsed into mo- 
notony, and I fell to napping, my head resting 
alternately on the ancient relic and her crusty 
lord — just as I became burdensome to the one or 
the other! My knowledge-box swayed between 
them until I was awakened by the obese party 
tramping upon the agricultural department of my 
great toe — corn growing there exuberantly: In- 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


131 


different to my suffering, she persisted in holding 
a fee simple to the spot she stood upon, so I was 
forced to the delicacy of removing the intruding 
pedal myself. For the seeming impertinence I was 
<}lutched by her husband and turned over to a 
policeman who hurried me off to jail, where I was 
<ionfined among thieves, rogues and cut-throats till 
morning. They gathered around me and requested 
the particulars of my crime, which I gave them in 
consideration for theiFs. One of them had stolen 
a march on a soldier ; another had broken into a 
store-keeper’s arrangements ; another had incon- 
siderately reduced the census ; another had taken 
the contents of an empty cash-box; and another, 
black as a bunged eye at midnight, had been dis- 
covered at the safe end of a gun when a neighbor’s 
hog went the way of all porkers. But the most 
«elf-constituted thief of all was the lank, ungainly 
specimen of humanity who walked off with a 
circus, and was caught when he came back after 
the clown. That man would steal a menagerie or 
u burning house. Anyway, he would make an or- 
dinary Congressman. 

In the morning I was released and my few effects 
were restored to me ; but when the jailor espied 
the lottery ticket — until then I had quite forgotten 
it — he hesitated, and said : 

“ Mr. Simple,” — I had autographed under that 


132 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


name — “ I will swap you a liorse for that piece of' 
paper, and start you out on him on the right road 
to any place. He is young and has four sound 
legs — one under each corner of him — and will 
carry you on the shoes of good luck anywhere.^^' 

Astride a good horse on the road to good luck 
was a kingdom to me, so I made the “ swap,’’ he 
giving me five dollars extra. After swapping I 
learned that the ticket had drawn the capital 
prize. Thus was fortune near, and yet so far y 
while misfortune was ever near and never far. 

On viewing my equine possession I perceived 
that he, too, was world-tired, and that even horse- 
traders were given to lying; but I mounted him. 
and rode out again into the world. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


That evening I overtook the Irishman who had 
^accompanied me into the town the day before. 
We traveled along socially together. Xearing the 
suburbs of the city, I noticed a yellow flag flaunt- 
ing over a building, which, as I told him, was a 
yellow-tever hospital. 

“ Xo,” said he, “iPs a divil of an Orangeman lives 
there ; an’ he’s doin’ well in the counthry, havin’ a 
big house and farm ; more than meself have.” 

I didn’t undeceive him, but permitted him to op- 
press the horse’s back behind me to the town. 
We put up at the same hotel, ate at the same table, 
^lept in the same bed, fed the same bed-bugs and 
ogled the same chambermaid together. Really, 
if he had been a woman I might have ran away 
with him. 

That evening he set up the wine until we were 
both upset, and the host and chambermaid had to 
drag us to bed. 

Xext morning I read in a paper the following 
advertisement : 

Wanted— A Coachman. 

Experience immaterial, as long as he is married, ugly and old. 

25 Leisure Street. 


134 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISEK. 


I possessed the three negatives, though I was 
affirming somewhat in the latter. I traded my 
horse for a pocket-knife and a plug-hat and applied 
at the above address for the position. Fourteen 
applicants were ahead of me in line, so ugly that 
tumble-bugs would not light on their faces. Such 
a multiplied compound of ugliness never shaded 
sunshine. 

They were all rejected but one, whose picture 
would bankrupt a photographer, who was black 
enough to sweat ink, and whose special fitness 
seemed to be to scare children and old women. 

Being somewhat of a facial contortionist, I dis- 
torted my features into such monstrous ugliness 
that I was selected as uglier than the ugliest, and 
a suitable coachman for the gentleman^s handsome 
wife and daughter. Thus was comeliness at a dis- 
count, and homeliness used as a woman’s pro- 
tector. 

The Hibernian was employed in the hotel, and, I 
heard afterwards, ornamented the police force be- 
fore he went to Congress. 

My new master was a retired plumber and 
spending his remaining days in opulent ease. 

In mellow age, supremely grand, 

Lingering in the summer-land ; 


Yet he was one — 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


135 


Whom worldly sweets had sated 
From youth to yellow sear ; 

Whom fortune over-freighted 
From birth to dying year. 

His wife was one of those noble, self-denying 
women who share but little of the world but its 
tears, whose weepings are sunshowers of the 
heart, whose eyes are founts of heavenly spray, 
and who shows that — 

Love adown the course of years. 

Holy grows bedewed with tears. 

Their daughter, a melting maiden, was one of 
those whose good or bad depends on association. 
She had an only sister, a child of six years, between 
whom and an aged man a strange friendship 
existed. She is now with the angels. 1 wove the 
incident into verse as follows : 

THE CHILD’S LAST TEAR. 

Beneath the shades of statelv homes 
An aged and wearied stranger roams, 

When falt’ring on his crutch and cane. 

Comes taps against a window-pane. 

A cherub child with dimpled hand. 

Inside a mansion, proudly grand. 

Compassion feels for his distress 
And smiles upon his loneliness. 

Though wand’ring long, from her alone, 

He hears a voice of kindly tone. 

And sees, to cheer his lonely pace, 

III features strange, a friendly face. 


136 


TIMOTHY WINEBEUISER. 


He, dreaming, sees a happy home 
He left beyond the ocean foam, 

And seeming there again a boy, 

Forgets his sorrow in her joy. 

As friends became the aged and young 
In beat of heart and lisp of tongue, 

He passes oft the little child 
To be again rejuveniled. 

One vocal morn in vernal spring. 

Being hushed his idol’s chattering. 

Within he limps with feeble tread, 

And finds the child he loved was— dead ! 

Her spirit pure at even’s dusk 
Had early left its mortal husk. 

But on a cheek, divine and lone 
A ling’ ring tear resplendent shone. 

That tiny bead of liquid soul 
Through dark’ning sight refulgent stole. 

Divinely blessed to mortal view. 

And seemed to mirror death’s adieu ! 

Before was raised the little mound 
Adown the vale, ’twas quickly found, 

A weeping stranger, wan and sear. 

Had kissed away' the child’s last tear! 

My muse ingratiated me into the daughter's 
graces, who deemed me rather good looking, while 
her mother had no more use for me than a horse- 
fly has for a curry-comb, and while her father 
owing to my contortions, facial and otherwise be- 
fore him, imagined me the most disfigured specimen 
of deformed ugliness that ever disgusted hu- 
manity. 

Still I struggled between their smiles and frowns 
at — nothing per month, and all I had to do was 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


137 


work. Like the coach-dog, I usually dined with 
JBridget in the kitchen, where I found more virtue 
than in the parlor, and more womanhood in a few 
.yards of calico than in acres of satin. But she 
“ fell out with the missus,’^ and married a police- 
man, and for a time I ate at a restaurant, where 
the towel was so coarse that I preferred to wipe 
my face on a paper of pins, and where the follow- 
ing was the bill of fare : 

BILL OF FARE, (VERY FAIR), 
sour. 

Mock Herring. Fly Soup. Whalebone Soup. 

.Soup with Vegetables. Vegetable Soup. And Soup, 

FISH. 

Cross-Eyed Herrings. Club-Footed Frogs. Drowned Lizards. 
Eels, a la Snake. Blind Herring. Stumptail Suckers. 

Bloated Minnows. Catfish Smothered in Muddy Water. 

COLD DISHES. 

Cold Crow, Cold Cabbage 

Cold Shoulder. Cold Corn. Teed Cake. 

.Fried Tee. Boiled Ice. Raw Ice. Ice Chromes. 

Ice Cutlets. Ice Icicles. And Ice. 

BOILED DISHES. 

Second-Hand Harness. Last Yeai’s’s Hats. 

-Old Boots. Mule Ears. Rags. Old Corns. Scrap Iron. 

BOILED. 

Buffalo with Hair on. 

Centennial Chicken. Coon, Stuffed with Cotton. 
tGoose, Stuffed with Cobbles. Crow, Stuffed with Garlic. 

Swan, Stuffed with Red Flannel. 


138 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


ON TRAYS (ENTREES). 

Homed Fi-ogs, Stuffed, with Eye-Salve. Tarantula Pot-Pie, a la 
Digger Indian. Bow-Legged Grasshoppers, w’ith Sour Milk Gravy. 
Flies, Dressed, with Stale Soup. Tree Toads, Stuffed, with White 
Mice. Umbrella, Eain-Water Sauce. Stewed Cat, with Onions. 
Frogs’ Ears, with Baked Flies on Chips. Horse Blankets Fricasseed. 
Locusts, on Half Shell. Spiders’ Toes, Breaded. Sausage, Dressed 
w’ith the Original Hair of the Dog. Hunchback Centipedes, on the 
Quarter Shell. Humming-Bird Eye-Brows, Smothered in Castor Oil. 

GAME. 

Sancho.Pedro. Old-Sledge, Casino. 

Euchre. Faro. Keno. Pitch. Pin-Pool. 

Smut. Croquet. Forty-Pive. Presbyterian Billiards. 
And High, Low, Jack, and the Game. 

VEGETABLES. 

Jimson Weeds, Stewed Cactus. Corn-Cobs. 

Potatoe Peel, Soft Corns. Parched Pu mpkiii. 

Baked Toadstools. Tight-Boot Corns. 

Cobs, with Corn on the Outside. 

TONGUE. 

Old Maid’s Lip, Vinegar Sauce. 

Curtain Lecture. Mother-iu-Law Tongue, and Son-in-Law Sass. 

PASTRY AND FRUIT. 

Saw-Dust Cake, Mucilage Sauce. Flaxseed Pudding. 
Left-Handed Custard Pie. Sponge Pie, Cut Bias.- 

Indian-Eubber Dumplings. Machine-Made Tarts. 

And Acidulated Grapes, 

Attached to the bill of fare were the following 
rules of the house : 

By leaving notice at the office the location of the restaurant will be 
changed to accommodate transient guests— in your mind . 

If steak is tough we will load it into a gun and shoot it into you. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


139 


Children in arms not admitted. It is bad enough to have ai-med 
men at the table. 

Every guest is permitted to bring a dog to lie under the table, to 
coax fleas off his master. 

He who attempts to pass twenty-cent pieces for quarters on the 
house will have the noodles in his soup stuffed with flies. 

No deduction made for holes in coin. This is getting business 
down to a hole. 

No extra charge for feeding dogs. We are running this restaurant 
for fun. 

Every guest will have a first-class seat, provided he brings it with 
him. 

Guests growling about breakfast not being red-hot, will make as 
much racket as possible, and we will try and make it exceedingly 
w^arm for them. 

ITaturally his liberal ( ? ) bill of fare brought the- 
proprietor a rushing business — by the door. Even 
the flies would not patronize him, and I fell so in 
arrears in my eating that I had to whisper my 
wants to the waiter, who became insulted thereby 
and ejected me from the room. He met no oppo- 
sition, as T was too weak to lick even a postage- 
stamp. 

Anger is too costly to spend on every trifle, so I 
deputed an Irish pug to pulverize him ; that 
was all. 

One morning as I drove out the family the horses 
took fright and ran into a circus procession, broke 
their hang-fired necks, spilt my gouty master and 
his wife and daughter into the mud and piled me 
helplessly among them. Some of the animals 


140 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


broke loose, and wMte-waslied blackbirds, twin 
elephants, hybrid jackasses, bearded women and 
other unpronounceable wonders spread scatter- 
ation among the small boys and others who gazed 
^ith open-mouthed wonder at the “ greatest show 
on earth.’^ 

Several policemen and an undertaker circled 
around us, but disappointment marred the latter’s 
features as he found us uninjured, save a few 
scratches on the old woman. He straightway 
rejoined his friend, the doctor. 

Before any damage was done a newspaper re- 
porter and a couple of cowboys recaptured the 
animals, and received a “thank-you” for their 
services. 

After bleeding at the nose until a mosquito 
would almost starve on me, I was raised to my feet 
and then on my master’s boot and sternly forced 
to travel again, feeling that his shoe-maker had 
fully anticipated the occasion. 

This monumental clod 
Is a miniature of God ; 

Yet few regarded my poor image as I wandered off 
and strayed again into worldly wilds. 

Remember December, ye flowers of May ; 

The morning’s a warning of even’s decay, 

Occurred to me then, but it was too late ; Fall had 
come. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


Man is naturally slow ; even a hearse overtakes^ 
him, and its precursor, age, overtook me, as — 

Lonely through the years I roamed, 

Where land perturbed and ocean foamed; 

Where few admired and miny scorned, 

And fairest roses deeply thorned; 

Where friendship hung on motive’s thread. 

And praise lisped only for the dead; 

Where hundreds cloyed and thousands yearned. 

And fools were wise and dunces learned; 

Where luscious sweets bore bitter, fruit, 

And evil clothed in righteous suit; 

Where food was boiled in many’s tears. 

And joy lived hours and sorrow years; 

Where accident exalted birth. 

And lucre gave to trifles, worth ; 

Where language masked dishonest thought. 

And countless eCforts added naught; 

Where pigmies swelled to giant’s size, 

And plainest features wore disguise; 

Where clouded were the brightest hours. 

And weeds grew over sweetest flowers; 

Where pelf was favmr’s countersign. 

And coarsest grain classed superfine; 

Where oily tongue discounted brains. 

And cleanest page bore many stains; 

Where simple brass outglittei’ed gold. 

And purchasers were often “ sold,” 

And none were more frequently than Winebruiser,, 
who was seldom deemed worthy a price-mark. 
Finally the years sodded my cranium with gray 


142 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


hair — the dust that^s gathered on the road of 
time — which I at first pulled out, thereby exter- 
minating the whites for the benefit of the blacks^ 
but they multiplied so that even a granger couldn^t 
weed them; consequently my capillaceous poll 
soon whitened with grave-blossoms. 

A gray hair is our first warning of the inevitable, 
as it droops in grim ominousness, a worn sentinel 
on the outposts of life. Mine, early foreshadowed 
the great reaper and mirrored my sad history in 
its whiteness. 


Mute orator of death I 
Thy eloquence excels 
The peal of solemn bells, 

Or plaint of dying breath; 

A bloom of ending care 
Aii; thou, ai'gental hair! 

Entering the penumbra of age the glimmer of 
youth and glitter of manhood sparkle anew, so I 
dreamt in the present and dwelt in the past. 

Though clouded the past. 

The sunshine at last 
Through darkness appears. 

And scatters its rays 
O’er earlier days 
To brighten the years. 

Before me was chaos and behind me darkness ; 
yet a faint ray of hope penetrated the gloom and I 
-resolved to retrace my pilgrimage. 

Turning back, I pursued my way towards early 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


143 


scenes, where fondly strayed a youth and maid in 
fancy free, whose love intense had scattered hence, 
’twas in-fancy! But mine had scattered not — 
memory had sheltered it from the winds of forget- 
fulness, for — 


However deeply love my lie, 

Bereft of mem’ry it would die; 

And recollection persevering-, 

Makes affection more endearing. 

Though long away, no land so broad nor ocean 
wide but what my heart beat o’er to friends who 
knew me in the long ago, and loved me in my 
youthful glow. 

As tulips grow 
Throughout the snow, 

So through the tears 
Of stormy years 
Love sturdy grows ; 

Its fragrant breath 
Respires till death. 

When its perfume 
Surrounds the tomb 
Till mem’ry’s close ! 

Eeturning after years to where the rarest 
charms abounded and loving arms surrounded in 
sunny days of yore, creates a gladness which only 
the heart can feel and no pen describe. Nearing 
there I fell in with a strange trio of humanity, an 
editor, a lawyer and a poet. 

The editor was “ off,” and going off because his 
wife had a live mother, and he could not edit his 


144 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


father-in-law^8 wife. The “ devil was running his’^ 
paper, and he was running away, and seemed to 
be rejected matter in the waste-basket of life.- 
Age had “ clipped his strength and he was 
“ puffed out. His “form” was bare, and his 
“ proof” typified a near “ take” for the Great Com- 
positor. 

The lawyer seemed to be a worse case than any 
he had pleaded, and was like an aged work-ox, a 
long time broke. He stood at the head of the* 
bar — when the front was crowded — and done a 
spirited practice, and was so fond of ofiSice-work 
that he had worked himself down working for of- 
fice. In short, he seemed to be only living to boy- 
cott the undertaker. 

The poet was one who, busy with his idle rhyme,, 
never married — hadn’t time ; still he had been — 

A fellow who far.ued in elegant leisure 
Zephyrs of joy into tempests of pleasure, 

But flickered, an ember, in ashes of fire. 

Which folJy had smothered with over-desire. 

He exemplified the fact that — 

Lubrication smoothens and over-oiling gums — 

’Tis not the distance traveled, but the speed, that overcomes. 

We met at a crossing of two railroads, each of 
us riding afoot and opposite to each other — a 
queer meeting of an odd quartette. The bard was 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


145 


hurrying like a darkey with a stolen hen, and 
leaving behind him what he never left before, 
footprints. 

He was “ shaking ” a woman entitled Mother 
Kill-Six, who, catching him, he said, would be 
Mother Kill-Seven. We pitied the poet, but he 
didn^t know it. He had neither assets nor a 
boarding-boss, but the lawyer organized him into 
a corporation of two, and they shook us, to prey 
on the world. They probably went to Congress — 
or the penitentiary. Before leaving, however, he 
warbled this song : 

Responsive to yearning 
That’s ever returning, 

The mind flutters hack upom mem’ry’s wing. 

And flits in the wild- wood. 

Where gaily in childhood 

We plucked with our lovers the blossoms of spring. 

What visions awaken 
The weary forsaken 

While facing, ill-mantled, adversity’s blast. 

As fond retrospection 
Awakes recollection. 

And mirrors the beings who gladdened the past I 

How many have fleeted 
Who lovingly greeted 

Us morning and even’ with innocent cheer. 

And crossed the dark river 
Unto the great Giver, 

While lonely we linger, disconsolate here ! 

How strangers to trouble 
We tripped o’er the stubble 

And lark-vocaled meadows of velvety green. 


146 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


Where shielded from sorrow 
We dreaded no morrow, 

But joyously basked in the Paradise scene! 

How features now olden 
Have paled since the golden 
Refulgence of childhood has flickered away ; 

And changed in the shadow 
Are lassie and lad, oh ! 

Where is the beauty that challenged decay? 

Whom mostly we cherish 
Alas, early perish, 

O’er frail for the rigors of life’s frigid zone; 

So smile on the faces 
Whom innocence graces. 

The sturdiest here will have presently flown ! 

The editor and I parted thereafter, he to play 
his part in the drama of life, and I, a poor actor, 
to do likewise. 

Finally I arrived at Kickapoo, were long before 
I fondly loved and basked briefly in marital joy. 
Old faces and places and features and creatures, 
all appeared as faded pictures on the canvass of 
memory. 

Of old companions none remained 
To welcome one whom love constrained 
To view again through age’s tears. 

The idols of his early years I 

All had changed. Time had rounded the squar- 
est shoulders and marred the loveliest features ; 
but in the door of an old mansion stood one who 
appeared little broken. 

Though time had many charms defaced, 

I through her wrinkles beauty traced. 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER. 


147 


As she glittered in the sunlight, she little 
thought that the passing stranger at whom the 
dogs were barking was poor old Tim, her once 
husband. She knew not the memories she awak- 
ened as I passed her, unrecognized. Her’s had 
doubtless faded, but mine goaded like mountains 
of thorns. Pride is manhood, and I could not 
bend even to her whom I still loved. So, scarcely 
faltering, I kept on, and each step I took into age 
was a yard of depreciation. 

On a wind-blown scrap of newspaper I read that 
a step-father had driven away my son, and that he 
had been killed in a railway accident. Sadly I re- 
membered the circumstances, having been on the 
train, but little thought that the dying boy who in- 
quired for father, and whom I sorrowfully kissed, 
was my dear son ! 

Broken-hearted, I departed for the old home- 
stead, which I found in ruins. In the fireplace I 
discovered the remnants of a cradle in which I 
had been rocked to sleep in my baby hours. 
Almost smelling the varnish of the coffin, I 
viewed the mold of the cradle. I picked up from 
among the ashes a piece of broken looking-glass 
and mused. 

I sat alone upon the stile 
To contemplate a wan profile, 

The glass called me; 


148 


TIMOTHY WINEBRUISER 


And trace the trenches time had made 
Upon my brow with double blade 
Since infancy! 

I noted locks of faded gray, 

Which in the years long passed away 
A mother dressed : 

And scrutinized the shades of dusk 
That circle round this mortal husk 
At death’s behest! 

I viewed the shell that gladdened two 
One night of old when it first drew 
Their loving gaze ; 

And marveled at the changes sad 
That overcame the happy lad 
Of other days ! 

Unrecognized, where youth was spent 
In artless pranks and merriment, 

I turned askant ; 

And wiped the tears which trickled down 
My furrowed cheeks, as if to drown 
This withered plan— 

The pen is taken from the hand of death to add 
a “ t ” to that unfinished word, and to inform the 
reader that happier now rests the tired spirit of 

Timothy Winebruiser. 


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